..........

Wait, what?

Blood pressure suddenly rising, Natalie stood up straighter, her wide eyes on the other girl. "Find out... what happens if you fall?" Because she didn't really know this girl, but she didn't necessarily want her to DIE. And she was fairly certain she WOULD die if she fell off the bridge. Then Natalie would probably get framed for murder and she was FAR TOO YOUNG to go to AZKABAN.

Where was she going? Errrmmm...

Was she the only one excited for the process of this? The girl was looking almost terrified in the face of discovery and not for the life of her could Jessa understand WHY. This was going to be fun! Really fun! "Yes! It'll be neat, we can climb down to check afterward, see what happens and while we're down there, we can find out if it's got some monsters and man-eating plants."

LOOK HOW MANY FWOOPERS THEY WERE GETTING WITH ONE STONE!!!!!!

Consider her way more excited than she should have been.

Eyes still shining, Jessa took hold of the girl's hand, moving just a little closer. "Would you like the honours or should I?"

She didn't mind. Either of them would work.

Climb down to check afterward... Check what? To see if they were DEAD? How were they going to CHECK if they were DEAD if they were ALREADY DEAD???

This girl was crazy. And she was holding her hand and she wasn't sure why. And she still wasn't sure what they were going to do right now. So much confusion. "The honors of what? Jumping?" Submitting themselves to instant death? Forfeiting the rest of their lives to the mere curiosity of what lay in the depths below? What if there was nothing cool down there? Then it would all be a waste!

"I don't want to die." Just so she knew. She wasn't down for this.

The confusion was evident, in fact it was downright hard to miss. Jessa found herself blinking at the final statement. Die?

"Neither of us is going to die...." She said, uncertain of what could've given her an idea like that. In her mind, nothing she'd previously said could have led down this road no matter how untrue that was. Oh dear, the confusion and slight look of horror were suddenly making a lot more sense. Jessa shook her head a few times, trying to reassure her; she'd even let go of her hand. "It's nothing like that, honest."

Perhaps she should have explained. Sometimes when she got an idea, it was hard to remember that others were not inside her head and wouldn't know about it until after she'd told them about it.

"What I meant was, which of us would be duplicated and pushed?" She'd seen it done during dueling club and had always found it a neat trick, one that would come in handy in other areas as well.

Granted, the girl had never duplicated anything as big as another person before, usually sticking to notes from her friends, stationary and occasionally socks until she could find the other one in the pair, but how hard could it honestly be...........?

Maybe this girl was blindly optimistic, but if either one of them jumped or fell off of this bridge, they WOULD die. Natalie didn't know physics well, but she was SURE that them dying was GOING TO HAPPEN.

Wherever her brain went, Natalie's brain did not follow... until she explained. Well, sort of. She still only sort of understood where she was going with this idea. Duplicated. Right.

Natalie tilted her head, still mildly confused. "But I thought you couldn't duplicate... humans. And food. And money." Just covering all the bases, in case this girl didn't know, but she thought that it was physically impossible. Of course, Natalie knew nothing of dueling (which is why she wasn't joining the club again this year), so if there was a duplicating spell in the dueling world, Natalie was unaware of it.

When Olly was drawing he tended to lose himself in his art. And that's what happened when he was doing his chalk drawing on the bridge. He focused on the lines and the colors, and was only snapped out of it when he heard a voice say his name. He glanced up and smiled when he saw Hattie. Olly had been hoping someone would join him, and of anyone he was definitely not surprised that it was Hattie, a fellow artist.

"A flower." He sat back to survey his work, and let Hattie see too. He'd thought a flower would be fairly easy to draw with chalk. "Want to join me?" He motioned to the bucket of new chalk beside him.

"You can duplicate food." Jessa corrected, moving back to the railing to have another look at how far the fall would be. "Increase the quantity specifically. So long as you already have it you can duplicate or make it bigger or make it something else. Reckon you can duplicate money too, it just vanishes after awhile making it useless." Pretty steep fall by the looks of it. Could they do a cushioning charm of sorts instead and have a jump? THAT WOULD BE NEXT!!!

"Conjuring's what you can't go doing with those. Don't reckon you can duplicate life either if that's what you mean by human but we don't need it alive and sentient." Because...that....was probably murder.....and........as much as she WAS curious to know what the inside of Azkaban was like, she preferred to have her sister take her on a field trip with that one.

"It'd be a hollow shell of either of us. Won't talk or feel or think." Seemed a little silly not to be able to duplicate matter that already existed--because that's what everyone was in the end, matter. Life on the other hand...that was tricky stuff even she wasn't trying to figure out.

'Sides, she'd seen it done. "The boy who'd done it...he'd used it as a decoy."

........

.... "Oh," Natalie said, deflating suddenly. She clearly had much to learn. Because she was apparently stupid. And now she could make more food? Just by increasing it with magic? Merlin, her whole life was about to change. She'd have to ask this girl how to do that... once they figured this situation out.

Right, back to the task at hand, which she still wasn't sure wasn't breaking any rules of Hogwarts or magic in general. "Are you sure? That sounds scary..." What would happen to it? Would it BLEED? That would be terrifying. A boy used it as a decoy, apparently. "Well, what happened to it? Did it... die?"

Hattie loved watching people do art. She was an artist, and it was her passion, and she just loved watching people. It helped her, gave her inspiration. So to see Olly doing some art, was pretty cool. She didn't know many artists around the school, so she liked knowing he was around. She hoped he didn't mind her bothering him. Though she would have thought he would have gone somewhere more secluded if he didn't want to be bothered. So she hoped he would be okay.

"Oooh. I like flowers" She drew and painted them a lot. They were nice, and there were lots of different kinds, so she never ran out of inspiration. "Oooh. Yes!" The blonde beamed, as she sat down, and looked through the bucket to find some good colours to use. "Are these new?"

It didn't go unnoticed the way the girl seemed to deflate at her words....almost like she was disappointed that you could have more food. Don't ask her why that'd have been such a bad thing. The Ravenclaw was never food's biggest fan but she did enjoy it and would definitely not turn down having her favourites in larger quantities. "What?" She asked, unable to make much of such a reaction.

This was...good news, wasn't it? Like larger ice-cream sundaes good news.

Jessa nodded firmly at the question. She knew what she was talking about, for the most part. "Nothing but a shell. Can't go producing life or anything, it'll be more like...an animated other self and nothing more. Won't really do things the way a real person would--so no, the boy's duplicate didn't die."

Merlin could you imagine? It'd technically be like watching yourself die and WHILE the Ravenclaw was curious abut most things, she had to admit it'd be a little....dodgy. "It just started to wear away...kinda like......--oh, kinda like a leaf. Starts out fresh and green then just starts to wither and break away. It didn't quite look like that but that's the concept. Or like......when you duplicate notes and they begin to fade and fall away after a while." Just another duplicate in the end.

Natalie loved food. She did. She was a bit of a picky eater at times, but she loved food. Especially if her mum made it. She was just momentarily bummed at the moment because she wasn't as smart as she thought she was. And this girl had caught onto it. "Nothing, I just... didn't know that." She thought it was the other way around. Oh well? Something new had been learned, right? Moving on.

She was trying really hard to understand this duplicate stuff. It was real, but it wasn't human. So it wouldn't die, rather it would just... wither away? That was still weird.

"Okay..." she said hesitantly, looking over the bridge again. "I guess..."

When you were new somewhere and would be there for awhile, one tended to do some wandering. This was one of those moments when she was alone rather then with her brother and that always gave her a weird feeling lately. Back at Ilvermorny it wasn't a huge deal being away from Jer but here...she was pretty much alone. This place wasn't like home and she was already missing everything and wanting to go back.

Somehow, someway Samara had ended up down this way. She was still very much getting lost, sometimes on purpose just to waste time. This time though she found herself on this large Wooden Bridge and before she knew it she was walking over it. Roughly midway across she paused and moved over to the side where she peered down at the drop below. At least she could say something nice about this place, the view was pretty nice. No one was really around at the moment and things were quiet. A fair place to do some thinking if one needed to.

Folding her arms on the railing and leaned against the railing a bit simply looking out into the distance. The slight breeze blew her hair around her face but right now Sam didn't even notice. For a few simple moments she was relatively content with things.

Being out of the castle was so much better than being in it, in Rhea's opinion. There were far too many people at Hogwarts, especially with the new addition of the Ilvermorny students. She could barely appreciate being new to Hogwarts herself with the influx of Ilvermorny and first year Hogwarts students, who all seemed to want to ask her for directions because she looked 'old enough to know everything there is to know about Hogwarts!' Not quite, hm. Did they not see the aura of 'leave me alone' that she was trying to give off? She was always quick to let them know that she was new too, though, and that she didn't know the way either.

No matter.

Rhea shoved her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and wandered until she saw a person. Great. She immediately started turning away from the girl because she didn't want to interact with anyone, but something stopped her. Maybe she was having a change of heart about socialising? Unlikely. Oh! That was it. She enjoyed the view from the bridge. So she continued to walk towards and across the bridge until she was about even with the other girl. "Don't mind me," she mumbled, leaning over the other side of the bridge to the one the other girl was on.

Olly grinned at Hattie. He liked flowers too. They weren't too difficult to draw and there were a lot of varieties. He was done with this one though and thought it was time to draw something else. The fact that he wasn't sure what yet was not important. He put the piece of chalk he had been using back in the container and studied it. Maybe one of the colors would just speak to him.

"Yeah, they are," he said in response to her question. "My dads just sent me some last weekend. They thought it might be fun and I might enjoy them." And of course he did. He liked any and all art forms. The fact that they had also sent him some paint made it even better. "What do you think you'll draw?"

"Oh. I didn't know that either, until I did." She said, pulling her wand from its holster. It was the case with...well everything and she dared say she sort of liked that feeling of not knowing just before a big reveal. Ignorance was fine, it often bred curiosity and discovery. The problem came when one was content to stay in their ignorance. Those were the sort she didn't fancy spending too much time around.

More importantly, they were coming to an agreement where the duplicate was concerned.

The thing was...agreeing would be the least of their problems. There was also creating one that would last long enough to hit the bottom and stay there til they got to it....they'd have to be able to make one in the first place. It wasn't as easy in practice as it was in theory.

"We'll make a duplicate of me, in case you're squeamish." Derf was squeamish when it came to certain experiments and he was her most willing test subject. It only made sense that anyone else would be too.

"Wanna push it or will I?" You know...if they actually managed to make one.

Aurora was being nosy, of course. This place was HUGE and she intended to explore every inch of it. Mostly she wanted to experience every bit of Hogwarts that she could while she was here - but she also wanted to get to know this place. Know it's secrets. Get in the head of her competitors and what their daily lives were like.

It was really a shame that she hadn't thought to bring her camera. There were soooo many picturesque views here! Perhaps Irene had brought hers with...

A gentle breeze blow over Samara once more making her shiver slightly more from the suddenness of it then so much the chill. The wind and once again sent her long brown into her face and she had to push it back away from her mouth and eyes. Pulling a hair tie off her wrist she used her fingers to pull her hair back into a high ponytail and then tied it back. There. At least now she wouldn't end up with anymore hair in her mouth and she could stand here in piece.

So much lost in her own thoughts and the view below Sam hardly heard the footsteps of someone else approaching the area. It was the nearly unheard mumbling that caught her attention and had her looking over her shoulder at a girl about her own age maybe. "Huh? Did you say something?" she asked softly but loud enough to be heard across the small distance to the other side of the bridge.

If they girl hadn't been talking to her she was going to feel rather stupid. At least she was trying though...communication with the Hogwarts kids hadn't been easy so far.

Quote:

Originally Posted by StarShine

The gesture of moving closer was appreciated, although Katherine still looked stressed. He thought OWLs were a sure thing, and she wished she was as comfortable as he was about it. "Yeah..." she muttered. Her mind worked in a different way - she needed guarantees, but she was glad he managed to do it... or so she hoped, if he talked so easily about them. He was the first person to say they weren't so bad, though, so maybe to great minds like them, they truly weren't that bad.

She glanced at him again, leaned on the railings, and smiled back. "That's such a nice offer, thank you!" She bet he was. "I'll keep it in mind and might ask for help in the future." Good? Good.

"So, what's up besides OWLs?" Especially if he didn't want to share his results with her.

Levi did his best not to stare even when it became clear that whatever comfort his words had offered hadn't been worth much. He supposed there was something particularly messed up about what were arguably the most important examinations of your life to happen when you were only fifteen years old; but then, he supposed that was also part of it. Prepare you for the future and whatnot. Though ideally failing them would be out of the question, his probably would have probably said something like, life is full of disappointments, son, so let this be a lesson for the future.

Which was true. But also a bleak way of looking at things.

He decided to go along with Katherine's change of topic. "Uh, not much." He cleared his throat, trace the banister with his index finger. "Taking things one day at the time. Supposedly." He grinned, tentively. "How about you? How have you been? I haven't seen you since Genny's non party."

To say that Kitty was stalking the Americans would make it sound more threatening than it was. Stalking was very in-prefect like behavior. Really, she was just insanely curious about the newcomers and liked observing them and watching them react to their surroundings. So, she told herself, you could say she was looking out for them.

She was now following this one as she crossed the bridge. Where was she headed, Kitty wondered.

"Hello," she said with a smile as she drew almost level to the girl. Was this girl older or younger than her? It was hard to tell. "Can I help you find anything?"

Wow. Rhea should have known better than to put herself in speaking distance of another person when she didn't want to be spoken to, her mistake. She buried herself further into her hoodie and turned her head towards the other girl. "I said 'don't mind me'," she repeated, slightly louder this time, hoping that it would end their conversation. It was still entirely possible, however, that she would have subject herself to small talk and awkward communications.

For now, she would appreciate the nature around her.

Aurora was pretty used to the Hogwarts kids coming up to her at this point. They were always asking about Ilvermorny, asking about her fellow competitors - basically asking about everything BUT her which was annoying. Aurora loved to talk about herself and thought she was going to get ample opportunity to do so here and been severely disappointed so far.

So she didn't react much when a girl in blue robes - those were the Ravenclaws, she remembered - approached her like a shopkeeper asking her if she needed help finding something to purchase. Still, she smiled and shook her head. "Nope, I'm good thanks. Just exploring," she told her.

She glanced at the girl again, and noticed one of those badge things on her robes. The prefects. "What is it that Prefects do again?" she asked in genuine curiosity. Was it like...a hall monitor? Or something more important?

It was times like this one that made Sam not understand most people. If you were going to act all weird and like you didn't even want to talk, than why bother speaking to begin with? She wasn't stupid and she knew that sometimes you just didn't feel in the mood to talk but coming out here and subjecting yourself to places were others might be wasn't the best idea. Unless maybe the girl was shy...only her words spoken didn't imply that she was. Whatever the reason, Sam honestly didn't care. If the other girl wanted to be left alone that was completely fine by her.

"Oh, well alright then," Samara replied simply with a slight shrug of her shoulders as she turned her full attention to the view out over the side of the bridge.

"Cool," she answered with a smile as the girl talked about exploring. "I'd show you our common room if I had permission, but I don't think I would. "The dark forest is forbidden, in case you were wondering" she felt compelled to say then. "You probably already know that. It's covered with giant spiders and hags."

And ooh, she wanted to know what prefects did!

Smiling slightly, she answered, "Well what I said right now is part of we do: warning other students of what is allowed and what is not allowed. We help keep everyone safe and help manage minor complications for the staff, who are always overworked. I enjoy it, though obviously it's hard sometimes."

"I'm Kitty Valentine," she said, holding out her hand politely to the girl. "What's your name? I love your school, by the way."

Well... duh? Natalie blinked skeptically at the girl and then shook her weird, unnecessary sentence from her mind. There were more important things at hand.

Like duplicating bodies and pushing them off the bridge.

Creating a duplicate seemed difficult and Natalie had no idea what the spell was for it, but apparently she did. And good, the duplicate would be of the other girl, not of her. Because she was a little nervous about this and didn't necessarily want to see her clone fall off a bridge. "Okay, erm... I don't wanna push it."

In fact, she still wasn't totally sure she wanted to be a part of this experiment, even though her curiosity was piqued. A little. On another note though, Natale realized that there was something important that they had left out.

"... Who are you again?"

What a day to walk the grounds without her charms textbook. She was sure she knew the spell, but the book always came with helpful little tips and reminders for bigger projects like these. It wasn't every day that one duplicated themselves, in fact she'd never done it before.

It should be fine. "That's okay, I don't mind pushing." It was a nooooone issue, they were gonna have fun. It was gonna be amazing.

"Jessa." She offered by way of reminder. They had a couple classes together but not everyone was on top of the name game. "And you're Derf's mermish friend he bought that plushie for when we went to the Galapagos Islands." He talked about her sometimes; often enough for the young girl to remember without being often enough to give her any real hope of a study. Always a prickly line that one.

"Right." She said, now straightening and drawing her wand. "If I begin screaming, I've probably done something wrong. At this point, the Groundskeeper's Hut is closer to this bridge than Healer Reed is back up in the castle. You may need to run quickly. Are you coordinated? I'm not, but I don't reckon I'll be running if I've gone and jinxed myself badly on accident."

So she had no choice but to hope Natalie was good for it.