Cris scratched near Meatball's right ear again, and chuckled when the kitten kicked his legs out like a baby again. Shaking his head in wonderment, he gently handed the kitten back to Elodie. Yes, Cris this kitten is yours to keep.

"Your grandparents have 4 Siberians? Aren't they the best dogs ever?? Odin, Thor and Storm are our adult Huskies. Storm just had a litter of six, four weeks before I left for here, so I bet they are going to be all grown when I see them again. I'm hoping that my parents will let us keep at least three of them," Cris told Elodie.

"Hey would you like to see the puppies? I took a picture of them before I came here." Cris quickly pulled out his wallet, flipped through the plastic pages containing photos until he found the photo he wanted. "Aren't they just awesome?" Cris smiled proudly at all six puppies.

"Really? It's allergic to pretty people and won't show their reflection? Cris asked with some measure of disbelieve. Even though, he was interested to find out whether that was a working theory or not, Cris couldn't bring himself to stand in front of the mirror. What if it didn't show his reflection? Or worse yet, what if it did?

Cris decided that he didn't want to find out either way. He wasn't one to care about his looks, or anyone else's for that matter, though he knew of some who were vain and self-absorbed about their own looks.

Once Meatball was back in her arms, she lifted him slightly and let him set on her shoulder, where he'd gotten so used to being that he fit snug and could even get part into her jacket and not need to be held up there. It was pretty handy when she wanted to take him with her to go and get some studying done. "My friends grandparents. I don't have any." Never...really had. She did, but she didn't at the same time. It was easier not to go into it and she just wanted to talk about dogs, obviously.

"But yes... They're brilliant." And snoozing with Ro-bear had been the best thing since she was 10. "I have an Australian Shepherd at home. My sister looks after him for me when I'm at school." Unfortunately. But Candice loved Mucklow as much as she loved her own dog and she had no problem with it. Squealing and cooing, Elodie clutched a hand to her heart and wiggled at the photo. "How cute! Oh, gosh! They're adorable!!! Do they have names??" She'd offer her own name if not. It suited all. Even boys.

Duh.

The urge to smirk was pushed away, and she shrugged. "Just what I've been told. But it isn't like there are many unattractive people around here, you know?" Or did she just...admire most people to the point where everyone was attractive?

Okay he needed to clean out his ears. "I stand corrected, It was your friends' grandparents who the Huskies," he nodded apologetically at her, right before he began oohing and ahhhing too. What? Guys could do that too and still be manly!!

"Australian Sheepdog? You have one? I've always thought they were the smartest dogs ever. Great companions too," Cris nodded appreciatively. Then all attention was turned to the photo he was showing Elodie.

"Aren't they just the most adorable puppies? Last I knew they were named...let's see this one here's Baldr, this one's Sif, this one's Dagr, this one's Sol, this one's Vali and this one here, the one with the mischievous furry face is Loki. And yes, they are all named after the Norse Gods," Cris grinned sheepishly at him.

"That was Andy's idea. I'm not sure whether my mother agrees with him though. So who knows they may have different names by now," Cris smiled fondly before turning to study the mirror again.

"I guess so. I have to admit that there are lots of attractive looking people here, present party included," Cris smiled at her. Jasmine just happened to the best looking of all.

At least, that was his opinion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zoe

Had Clifton Branagh and the acting business not been on her mind, she would have noticed the professor daydreaming too. Catching him daydreaming gave her so many options when it came to reacting. She could have snapped to catch his attention, sighed oh-so dramatically with a hair flip, or loudly stormed off for being ignored by an adult. Demelza probably would have given Flamsteed sassy snaps. The man was sort of growing on her.

That was why she had saved him from being crushed by a mirror that did not even work. She wasn't going to whip out her want for just anyone after all. But she had received four points for doing so. Demelza was not a student that cared much for points, considering the Academy didn't bribe their students with them to perform well. But the points were nice nonetheless. She’d take them. "Thanks. It's not every day that I save professors from mirror flattening."

Flamsteed then took out his wand, earning an eye roll from her. Why hadn't he taken his wand out sooner? They had those for a reason.

And then he was going on about some cave-in and wondering where the hidden passage had led to. Demelza shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe it leads to somewhere else in the castle. Or maybe even Hogsmeade. Chances are the mirrors actually work wherever it goes." Not like they'd be finding out anytime soon unless they managed to fix the passageway.

Mirrow flattening. Imagine that. After everything he had gone through at Hogwarts since being hired - dementors, old age, crying students - being taken down by a mirror. There was an even stronger sense of irony in the matter when one calculated how much time he spent standing in front of the mirror checking on his appearance - mainly that of his suit, but shh.

"Should hopefully take a lot more than a mirror to take me down," he mused as he gave the caved in wall a few more firm taps with his wand. Hmm...something odd about this. And as tempting as it was to clear away the rubble to see where it lead, he was a little unsure if Miss Diggle was the best company for the task. Even if she was proficient with her wand.

"Perhaps," he replied. Doubtful, but anything was possible. "This mean we are going to skip through a few scenes and take on the role of two of the Seven Drawfs then?" He was game if she was. Try and clear things out. Seemed like they would need to use brute force rather than banish the rubble away. Some mysterious force seemed present here. How exciting!

Was he cooing? Had someone dropped him on his head or something? Elodie raised an eyebrow, but it fell into normal position moments after. "I do, yes. My b- friend... got me him. His name is Mucklow and he's just a little over a year old now." And he was perfect in all senses of the word. Luckily, her sister looked after him well enough that it was okay for Elodie to stay at home and he was loyal enough to love her more every time she went home.

She was still in puppy lovin' mode as she cooed more over the pictures, but it lasted only as long as it took for him to gtell her the names of them. She laughed a little bit, and gave him a questioning look. "Really? Those are their names?" It wasn't her place to have an opinion, but she still found it funny that those names were... awful? Maybe? "I suppose it's better that they're all of one theme. It's cute." But awf.

She tilted her head, nodding about the attractive people thing, and watched the mirror image again. She supposed it was atleast a decent thing to look at. Better than some of the things she could think of.

With his winter coat hiding his tucked in Slytherin scarf, Simon made his way into a relatively silent part of the fourth floor. Merlin! Perhaps he'd finally found the perfect place to chill out and finish his favourite novel.

Out of the corner of his left eye, he spotted something. Turning a blue gaze to it, he noticed that it was a huge mirror. Huh? he thought as he took several steps towards it to examine the object. It was absolutely magnificent. When Simon looked into the mirror, he saw beautiful chandeliers hanging gracefully. Wait. Was that behind him? He turned away and gazed over his shoulder to see if the scene was there. However, it wasn't.

Stumped, the boy decided to spend some time, trying to figure out this contraption.

If he'd walked by this mirror once, he'd walked past it a thousand times. He was well-acquainted with the strange mirror, as well as the little hidey-hole behind it (a decent little space, but not one of Toby's crawlspaces, so it no longer surprised him to see the not-reflection these days.

But that didn't mean that the Hufflepuff didn't find it fascinating anymore. In fact, he liked to come back here every now and then to marvel at the contents of the mirror, much like he would with the paintings hung upon the walls of the castle.

Today, however, he'd brought company. Toby had managed to fit a length of string around the front wheel truck of his skateboard, and was pulling it along while Bludger, his black cat, sat on it looking important and batting at people's ankles as he rolled by.

Eventually, Toby stopped by the mirror, dimly aware of another boy who was already here, and glancing at Bludger to check that the feline wasn't about to do his party trick of climb-the-big-hairless-cat. All seemed fine, so Toby allowed himself to turn and stare into the big magic mirror in wonder. It really was an extravagant scene in there, and not for the first time Toby wondered what room he was looking into, if it actually existed at all.

Down by his feet, Bludger had started to bat playfully at the end of the string that dangled from Toby's hand.

He heard footsteps approach him but he didn't turn around at first as he was so preoccupied with the magnificent mirror. Then he sort of asked a random question to the stranger. "What charm or spell do you think is on this mirror to give us that image?" he asked, stroking an imaginary beard on his chin as he pondered the solutions. Simon turned around when he heard something hitting something else. Huh? he thought and was surprised when he saw a boy playing with a cute black cat. He smiled a little and then his smile dropped when he saw that the boy had a very familiar face.

"Whaa.. Whaaa.. Wha-?" muttered Simon as he stood with a jaw and bright blue eyes wide open. He blinked a couple of times and rubbed his eyes as he thought perhaps the boy was a figment of his overactive imagination. He closed them but when he looked again, he saw the familiar boy. That boy looked almost exactly like him. How was this even possible?

So he was just staring there, trying to come up with a sentence when he just blurted something out. "Hi." Hi was good. It was better than Sweet Mother of Merlin or any other go-to phrase. He took a deep breath, "I'm Simon. Are you Toby?"

Yeah.... That seemed like a relatively good way to start the conversation.

Toby gave a shrug of shoulder when the boy beside him spoke up, and he continued peering into the room he saw through the mirror.

"Dunno," he said. "Probably not even an intentional thing. Maybe it's a really big two way mirror that goes to an empty place." Toby kind of liked that idea; that he might be showing up in mirror on a wall in another place entirely. "Or maybe it looks back in time to where it was first put on a wall." He spoke a little more enthusiastically now, his vivid imagination really kicking in. "Or maybe to a different dimension. Or...-"

Tobias stopped there, because he was sure he'd heard the boy mutter something. Maybe a spell of some sort? No... no, it didn't really sound like one at all. The Hufflepuff looked around just in time for the other boy to say 'hi' to him, and he automatically grinned in response.

At that moment, Bludger, who had been playing with his shoelaces, suddenly and inexplicably went for his ankle. "Ow! Bludger, what even..." Gently, very gently, Toby shook his leg in an attempt to get his sharp-toothed cat off of him. When that didn't work, he started wiggling the end of the string in Bludger's face again, which duly distracted the black cat.

The boy was talking again, so Toby looked up. "Hi Simon." Frieeeeeeeeeeeeeend? But wait, hang on... Simon knew his name. This wasn't the first time this had happened recently though, and, thinking back to that interaction, Toby suddenly realised what was happening.

He was generally very unobservant, a boy who was easily distracted by the little things and his mind often going far too fast and in absurd directions for him to make connections with the here and the now. But now Toby DID stop and think, and he remembered the name 'Simon', and what he'd heard about a boy with that name. It was only when he actually paid attention to the face of the boy in front of him that Toby realised that THIS was the kid he apparently looked just like. According to Ethan anyway.

It was difficult to tell, only having immediate access to a mirror that didn't even show their reflections, and Toby always found it hard to remember exactly what he looked like. It was no surprise that he had probably walked past this kid dozens of times and not made the connection.

All those thoughts occured to him in a split second, and soon Toby found himself nodding.

"Yeah," he said simply, really taking in the other boy's face properly and realising that yes...they really did look very similar, from what he was remembering of his own face anyway. The difference being that this other kid was a good couple of inches taller, at the very least. "And you're Ethan's friend, aren't you, Simon? The one that looks like me?" Just getting straight to the point there.

Suddenly remembering something, Toby started patting at his pockets, looking for a particular possession of his that would be quite useful right now.

[spoiler=Toby] Simon raised his eyebrows excitedly when Toby said that perhaps the Mirror looked back in time? "That would be wicked! A different dimension? Do you think it'd be possibly to find a way to enchant it so we could actually visit that dimension? I wouldn't want to mess up any time continuum or fabric of reality stuff though. That'd be horrible," admitted Simon, thinking about the countless amount of Doctor Who episodes where people were constantly warned about parallel universes. Yes. Parallel universes could destroy the time-wimey stuff. And that was what Simon had learned from that show as a kid.

Then the Hufflepuff kid, his uncanny doppelgänger, was bitten by the adorable kitten. Merlin. Despite knowing that the cat was only playing, Simon eyed the cat carefully and decided not to pet for he didn't want to be bit. Not today. He had already received plenty of biting marks from friends and neighbours pets over the past years. He enjoyed animals but not biting ones. Then he just waved at Toby when the other boy said hello.

Errr.. Yeah. This wasn't awkward, was it?

Simon watched the shorter familiar boy nod at him now. Was that a good sign or was Toby also freaking out? Merlin. This was one of those times where Simon wished that he had mind-reading powers so he could tell what another person was thinking.

He nodded and gave Toby Tempus a thumb's up. "Yes, I'm Ethan's mate. We're dormmates." Well he was also more than Ethan's mate. They were close. They were dormmates. They slept practically a few feet away from each other. But it probably would have been weird to point that out to someone he just met only a couple seconds ago or something so Simon filtered his thoughts. Also, he wasn't going to point that out cause you know he liked Toby. Toby seemed like a cool guy. Plus if Toby and he looked alike and he was awesome then Toby had to be awesome. Besides, people said Toby was really nice anyway so it was a bonus looking similar to the other guy. "Who said I looked like you? What if you look like me?" teased Simon, turning the question around with an amused smirk. "Nah, I'm pulling your leg, mate. Apparently, we do look quite alike or so Cutty likes to point out all the time."

Visit the other dimension. Hm. Toby wasn't sure about that. If there was such a spell like that, then there would already be such a form of transportation in their world already that involved mirrors. Still, people were discovering things all the time, after all. Maybe it would be the next big thing.

But there were more pressing things to deal with right now, and that was this whole real life double situation thing. At that point, Toby seemed to find what he was looking for, and pulled out his two way mirror from his pocket. But not to call Soph, as he'd probably be seeing her later, and could tell her all about this then.

"Cool," Toby replied, grinning. But it did start him thinking about Forrest again, and how much he missed his best mate. They, too, had been dormmates for a little while. Thinking about Forrest could sometimes be painful, however, but luckily Simon had already carried on. The Hufflepuff grinned a little wider, a grin usually reserved for Soph or Fuller or Thompson or Culloden when he teased them. "Well, that depends which one of us is older, huh?" he retorted, but the effect was ruined by the fact that he still had that playful, friendly expression.

Toby gave Simon a friendly nudge then. "I'm kidding too. I think it's cool we have similar faces."

Speaking of which, Toby finally tilted his two way mirror up so he could see into it, allowing him to properly compare his and Simon's faces. Ah. Yeah. He could totally see how people might find himself and Simon kind of uncanny. There was definitely something there.

The Hufflepuff was just tucking the mirror safely away back into his pocket when the name 'Cutty' caught his attention. Ah. Cutty.

He nodded again, a little slower this time, and chose his words very deliberately whilst keeping a smile on his face.

"Yeah, I know Cutty." Was it something of note that he apparently compared Toby to Simon 'all the time'? Probably not, but given that they hadn't spoken to each OTHER in such a long time, it gave Toby a particular fluttery feeling in his stomach to hear that his (former?) friend still at least spoke about and thought of him. "How's, uh... how's he doing?"

Just real casual right here. Toby didn't know how close the two of them were, still didn't know Simon's year, but he thought it was worth asking. Except now he was being distracted again, for Bludger was leaping up and trying to bat at his fingers, needy for attention. Toby picked up the demonic creature and allowed him to crawl up and stand on his shoulders. "This is Bludger, by the way."

Simon beamed at Toby’s teasing. Wow, Cutty had been wrong about how Toby seemed to be a better suit for Slytherin than Hufflepuff for Simon could only tell that the boy had a good sense of humour. “Older? I suppose so but when did age ever count? I’m fourteen, he said grinning. Ha, beat that my SHORTER doppleganger, he thought. He chuckled. “Thank Merlin. I thought you were but if you weren’t well that would have been,” began Simon, reaching up to tug on his collar. “Quite awkward.” He laughed. He liked the kid who looked like him already (or vice versa). It was awesome that Toby and he shared an uncanny resemblance. MAYBE TOBY WAS HIS LONG LOST BROTHER? Nope. Nope. That definitely could have been it. That would have been the EASIEST thing that anyone would predict- would that prediction be correct? Of course not. Life was never that simple…Or was it? Besides, it was just cool looking alike. They could get up to a lot of mischief with this. He smirked. “It is cool. We could wreck a lot of havoc but I don’t really enjoy losing points,” he explained. The boy was very serious when it came to earning points and whatnot.

Then the boy was holding up a mirror kind of towards his face. “Uh.. What’s that.. Is that a mirror?” he said blinking as he wondered why in Merlin’s name would the Hufflepuff need to check out his reflection at this point in time. The boy suddenly felt extremely self-conscious and wished that he too did have a mirror.

Simon nodded. He already knew that Cutty and Toby knew each other but Simon had never saw them hang out. He knew that the two used to be friends and something happened. The boy really wanted to know what though because he couldn’t see a mean streak in the Huffelpuff in front of him (well- at the moment). “Yeah, he said that you two were sort of close…” Wow, had this got a little bit awkward. “He’s doing alright. Cutty’s… Cutty, you know. A little bit strange but aren’t we all a little strange to a certain extent?” he explained, treading carefully. Simon and Cutty were good mates; however, some of the things that Cutty had spoken to Simon about just made alarm bells ring in Simon’s head. He just had to be careful.

The boy grinned at the little cat who was trying to grab Toby’s attention. He smiled. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Bludger,” he said, giving he cat a nod and a grin. He didn’t want to get to close though. Cats in playful moods could be bad. Very bad. The name of the cat intrigued Simon. “Do you play Quidditch? I know its an abrupt question but that’s the first thing that came to my mind when you told me that his name was Bludger.”

"Well y'know," Toby began, shrugging one shoulder but still grinning as he looked up at Bludger perched up on his shoulder and began to pet the feline. "If you were born first, I'd look like you, and if I was born first, it'd be the other way around." It was just semantics really, not really that important. Toby had much more fun thinking about alternative theories. "Unless one of us used to look different and totally stole the other's face. That'd be awful." But unlikely to be true. They looked very very similar, but there were still differences. But shhhhhhhhhh. "Anyway, I'm fifteen." Hard to believe he was older, right? It really wasn't important, but now Simon had mentioned his age it made sense for Toby to do the same in return. He looked back at the younger-but-taller boy and grinned. He was talking about wreaking havoc and not losing points and stuff, and that was all okay with Toby. He himself had never been too concerned with earning points, but losing them would be pretty unfair on his house.

Whoops, he was tuning out, wasn't he. Yep, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand back in the room. His mirror. Simon was pointing at his mirror.

"Uh-huh, yeah," Toby nodded, tucking it safely back into his pocket. "It's a two-way mirror that my girlfriend got me, so I can speak to her. I just, y'know, wanted to check the resemblance between you and me, is all."

......... Cutty said that? Huh. Well, at least Toby knew that Cutty had felt like they'd been close too. That made Toby smile a bit more, even if all that wasn't the case right now. "Well, that's cool. I'm glad he's okay. Haven't had a chance to speak to him in a while, y'know?" Which was, y'know, the truth. Just not all of it.

...

Wait wait waiiiiiiiiiiit. THIS was a topic Toby could go on about forever. Quiddiiiiiiiiiiiitch.

"Yeah, I am," the Hufflepuff beamed. "I used to play on the Hufflepuff team, but I couldn't play this year of course. And I play on the England Under-17s team as well. I love Quidditch, best thing ever. Do you play?" Or follow the game? Toby looked super enthusiastic now. QuidditchQuidditchQuidditch.