one obstacle after another., tag; jules.

[Alice Virginia Longbottom]

The room in which Alice was standing was pitch black. Well, she wasn't standing. More like, sitting down, tied to a chair. She was struggling, and she barely had any idea of what was going on. The outline of her twin was sat next to her, but he wasn't bothering to struggle against it. A man in rags, his face waxy, staggered in with his wand lit. He looked like he had been tortured for a number of years; and had just escaped. That, or he was very, very drunk.

"Crucio!"

Alice withered in pain, screaming, begging them to stop. He bent down towards her, and was about to utter one single, tiny word, when...

She woke up. Alice couldn't help but frown. It was a dream? Thank god. She must have fallen asleep whilst she was having breakfast or something. The same dream had plagued her mind last night too. She knew it was just a dream, but she hated the thought of it becoming a reality. It was something which she refused to let happen at all costs. She just wished that the azkaban prisoners would go back to their cells, and die there. She rarely wished for someone to die, but today she did. They deserved it, after all.

Alice lifted her head up, to find something sticky on her cheek. Urgh, jam. She looked down and she'd been resting on her toast. What time was it anyway? Alice checked her watch, wiping the jam off her cheek with a napkin. She almost fell out of her seat. Midday? Midday! MID-- damnit! She should be in class, except she wasn't, and she was going to get house points knocked off for being late, and it would all end really bad. Alice jumped up from her seat, and looked around the great hall. It was completely deserted. She spun around, unsure of what to do, and sighed. This was just a bad, bad day. Very bad.

Alice walked up and down, trying to figure out a suitable plan. When someone did that in the movies, something would come to them eventually. So something would come to her, right? Wrong. Of course nothing would -- that was a story, this was reality. She was just freaking out... again. She was still shaking from the nightmare, and although she tried to stop, she couldn't. Her hands were cold, and her cheek still felt sticky, though she'd wiped the jam away. The young gryffindor walked quickly to the door, and almost screamed to find it begin to creak open. Who could be coming in at this time? Maybe it was a house elf? Or a professor? In fright, she jumped under the gryffindor table, and waited patiently, praying that nobody would look her way.

[Juliette Lyn Cauldwell]

Classes could really be dull sometimes. In fact, Juliette Cauldwell was nearing the conclusion that school would probably be the most amazing thing in the known world if they didn’t forced hour upon upon of organized learning upon students. Most of the really important stuff you had to learn in real life, experience for yourself. But as her parents had so wisely informed her, she couldn’t become a famous writer if she didn’t first graduate from Hogwarts. For now Jules was forced to play the part of the dutiful student, while seeking out her future goals in her limited spare time.

Well, mostly dutiful. She was no Ravenclaw, no live-in-a-corner-with-pile-of-ancient-textbooks kind of girl. And she was certainly not a teacher’s pet, either. No, Juliette Lyn Cauldwell had skipped more than her fair share of classes for no adequate reason, and today was just one of those days, and one of those classes - History of Magic to be particular. Of all the unpractical, useless courses, that one had to top the list. The fifth-year liked to think she was a decent student, but something about that class nearly put her to sleep every time. And the homework assignments...but she didn’t want to think about that.

As she made her way down one of the main Hogwarts corridors, checking around her just to make sure, Jules congratulated herself on having successful evaded History of Magic once again. Sure, part of her felt bad about skipping out, but the pleasures of the extra spare time and the thrill of hiding out with far too persuasive for her already weak resistance. She was getting bolder about it, too, evidenced by the fact that she was actually humming as she strolled toward the Great Hall. Yes, humming. Not too loudly, and more than a little off-key, nothing intelligible as an actual song. The Hufflepuff couldn’t even tell, when asked, the reason she was humming. Perhaps making more noise simply added to the perceived “danger” element and that adventurous thrill that she so loved. She had no particular reason for heading to the Great Hall, it was the middle of the day, and she’d just eaten, but something subconscious seemed to be drawing her there.

The humming stopped - again, just in case - as she slowly opened the door. At first the spacious roomed looked entirely empty, just as she’d expected. Then the thought came, somewhere from the back of her subconscious, that she’d seen a brief flash of movement as the door had opened. Narrowing the scope of her view to the direction she thought...whatever it was...had gone, her gaze finally came to rest on the source. It was Alice Longbottom, apparently hiding underneath the Gryffindor table. Jules couldn’t help laughing, but not unkindly, at the site of her friend in such a position. “I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be brave,” she said, crouching down to Alice’s level, quite curious to see why she was down there. "What are you doing there?"

[Alice Virginia Longbottom]

As the door fully opened, and a figure walked inside, Alice realized it was a student. The robes pointed it out for one thing. The other thing which gave it away was that the person didn't look old or anything. As she took another look, she found she recognized her. It was Juliette; her good friend. Why on earth was she hiding from her friend? Oh bugger. She felt her cheeks reddening at the stupidity of it all, not to mention the awkwardness of the situation, as she found her friend's eyes lay on the gryffindor table -- on her. And now she was laughing. It didn't sound cold or anything, but it made Alice's cheeks go even redder than what they were.

“I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be brave,”

Alice couldn't help but pout. Jules wasn't helping the situation; quite the opposite really. "Yeah well..." she mumbled, but she found that she didn't quite have a retort. Well, that was annoying. Truth be told, she was brave. But if Juliette knew the full story, she'd be shaking too. To be honest, in the past few seconds, Alice's face had whitened. Not because of this new arrival, but because her nightmare had sunk in. Why couldn't her parents have named her something completely unrelated to her grandparents, like Helen, or Lucy? It might have made her feel better about all of this. She watched Juliette crouch down to her level, and listened to her speak.

"What are you doing there?"

Oh damnit. What should she tell her now? That she had fallen asleep during breakfast, had a completely irrational nightmare, and woke to find she was accidentally skipping class, so she hid under a table in fear that it was a professor about to give her another detention? Yeah, she could already imagine that conversation.. "Dropped my watch." Alice muttered briefly, holding up her left arm to show the object upon her wrist; a silver, very scratched watch. "It slipped under the table as I was coming out. I'd just put it on by the time you'd come in." she added. It sounded convincing enough, but she didn't quite know the odds of her watch slipping right off her wrist. Well, maybe there was a chance that Juliette would believe it. She stood up, careful not to bang her head on the table as she did so, and looked at Juliette. "What about you? Classes too boring?" she asked her, with a grin. Maybe Jules was trying to escape potions or whatever. Urgh, she could have shuddered at the thought. Potions...