look for the girl with the broken smile // ask her if she wants to stay awhile

DRAFT: Unpopping Sarah, hogwarts_hocus

2007-08-03T20:46:02Z

WHO: Sarah and OPEN
WHERE: Popcorn room, corridor outside

Waking up on a cold, stone floor was not among Sarah's top ten list of things to do in the morning... at least, it should have been morning, but the light in her room was all wrong. Had she overslept? Was she sick again? Ugh. In fact, everything in her room was all wrong because this was not her room.

Oh God, not again.

Blinking rapidly, she scrubbed the sleep out of her eyes with one hand and patted her front with the other, which confirmed that no, she had not woken up in someone else's body again, and then sat up.

And froze. The popcorn room.

Sarah took in the glass cases before her with something akin to mild horror. Why, precisely, had she been sleeping on the popcorn room floor? Yet, even as the question finished forming, another hypothesis sprang up in her mind as the smell of her clothes reached her nose. Butter. Not a inherently bad smell, except that this time it was slightly musty, but still... eww. Wait, not only eww...

"Oh shit!" Her voice sounded hoarse and unnatural to her ears, as though she had not used it in some time. She cleared her throat hard and moved her jaw in a circle and then tried again. "My name is Sarah and I think I was just recently a snack food." Okay, voice definitely working better now but, seriously, popcorn?!

Sarah dropped her head into her hands, fighting to recall just what in the name of God was going on. She remembered going to sleep, more clearly than one might remember a routine behavior repeated every night because she had not felt well and was worried about coming down with the same virus she had gotten over the Christmas holiday. There was... something after that, hazy and weird like a dream she struggled to hold on to after sleep, a jumble of images and feelings and the like. Maybe it was a dream. Did popcorn dream?

"Popcorn." Okay, so it was taking a bit longer to wrap her brain around this than she would have thought. Not that she ever had, that is, thought about being popcorn and then not being popcorn again. Popcorn was - or used to be, at least - too sensitive a subject to sit there and imagine herself as the snack food. It was like... well, picturing yourself dead or something. Except, she wasn't dead, she was back and, as far as she knew, the same person she was at the point she had gone to sleep. So, popcorn = dead theory effectively busted, which was nice, if not for the fact she had been the one to bust it!

Planting her palms on the floor to regain her sense of balance, she moved to stand upright and then swayed slightly, bending to rub her legs. Oww. Her limbs were kind of asleep. She couldn't even have been put in a comfortable position as popcorn? Or, within the kernel? Maybe she had never changed shape at all? Oh, who knew.

Looking down at her clothes with a mild sort of disgust, Sarah growled. Apparently she had indeed gone straight from sleep to popcorn, because those were definitely the Scooby pyjama pants and tank top she had last put on and now smelled like old butter. And were oily, how nasty! The bare feet were fine, in fact, she was just grateful she had been sleeping in something halfway modest. She had been a college student, pyjamas might as well be clothing in most cases, so there wasn't a problem there.

Shaking her head as she walked to the door only served to make the musty butter smell worse and she grasped a chunk of her long, dark hair and examined it with a sigh. There was not enough shampoo in the world to get this out in less than three washes. Exiting the popcorn room as she let go of her hair, she immediately glanced to the plaque, though she suspected her name had already vanished. Good, it would have been creepy otherwise.

"Oh my God."

The familiar muttered oath was let out more in a gust of released air than spoken. The list was twice as long as it had been! Had there been an epidemic popcorning that had gotten her too? Had she been gone long... no, that would be jumping to conclusions.

She knew she should go shower, eat, figure out what day it was, find her kittens (and the rest of her belongings, she prayed the magic of the school just made it store them somewhere), see if Munnin had been able to take care of himself too and send some "owls"... She should do a number of things before checking this cursed list, but this was Sarah and that would have been a bit too sensible. Finger starting around a spot where she recognized names from being at the former bottom of the plaque, she began to read, stomach sinking with each familiar one but not bottoming out yet.

Fiyero. Data, who had never believed he could do magic even when he did it. There were names of people she knew in passing acquaintance and, with a sick sort of relief, she even noted Jareth's name.

But not Lily. Not Ryuuji. Not JD or Jack, not Domino, not Dr. Cox or Sirius, not Agnes who was always so sweet to her, not Zex with his endearing, bumbling unsureness with humans and not a host of others who she would have been grieved to see on this list. Somewhere, God must care just a little bit for her sanity. That these people might not be on the list but still different never even occurred to her.

And then something hit her in the leg and did not let go. Sharp pointy OWW. So, instinctively, she screamed. Loudly. "AAAAAH, NO... wait... Cleo?" Looking down, she met the gaze of her kitten, who had attached herself to the leg of Sarah's pyjamas with sharp little claws as though she had no intention of letting go. With a startled laugh, Sarah reached down and scooped up the ginger tiger kitten and then beamed when a darker tiger kitten bounced into view.

"Have you guys been wandering the school while I was gone?" she asked, but did not really expect an answer. After all, while Cleo had been a gift - she had never liked taking 'bribes' at Sortings - from Quaxo who did talk, the kitten had yet to start to speak, if ever. And Gawain, well, he had never appeared to be more than a normal kitten, even if he, like Cleo, had stayed smaller much, much longer than any cat she had ever known.

Smack. "Well, I'm sorry, geez," Sarah groused and rubbed her nose as she put Cleo back on the ground, then snorted when the irritated kitten began cleaning herself vigorously. Popcorn funk. Perhaps a bath would be better than a shower.

Okay, so. Herself. Check. Her cats. Check. Her life.

Crap.

She jammed her hands into the pockets of her pyjama pants grumpily and then promptly let out a happy shriek of glee. Score, cellphone! Yet, inspection of it only proved to sour her mood again. Dead battery.

"I really, really hope I wasn't gone long," she muttered to herself, intently eyeing the kittens milling about her feet. Were they bigger? Older? Hmmm.

((ooc: Same mun, same Sarah as before, so anyone she knew before she'll still know now, if they'd like to come across her. And she loves new friends! :D))

muse_playground prompt #79

2007-06-07T01:37:23Z

79. "Seems like it was yesterday when I saw your face
You told me how proud you were, but I walked away
If only I knew what I know today" ~ Christina Aguilera

On Mother's Day this year, I didn't even think of my own mother once. Instead, I thought about my best friend, Lily, a lot. Seems odd, except if you know the history behind it and that history is that she was more a mother to me in almost nine months than my own mother was in nineteen years.

I still remember the first time we met – even then she taught me. Oh, it wasn't just about her encouragement in getting a charm right that I hadn't been able to master before that, it was that she taught me the first of many lessons about believing in myself. You think a stranger wouldn't be able to accomplish that in one afternoon by a lake, but she did by simply telling me that I was right for the house I had been sorted into and, even more, that I had potential. That made me realize perhaps maybe I was right for Hogwarts itself.

She was so insightful, though you would likely never hear her saying anything but the opposite. So many times she started some talk we were having with an excuse about not knowing much about it, then gave me the best advice I'd ever been given. Not just advice you'd get from a friend, but the kind of advice you would get from a parent who truly cared only for what was best for you. Somehow she made the combination of friend and mother effortless, as though she couldn't be anything else but exactly that person. I would have never wanted her to be anything else, that's for certain.

So many times she told me how proud she was of me, encouraging me in everything she taught me about Charms and magic and even life in general. She was my best friend, my confidante, my drunken owling buddy and the person who never once seemed disappointed in me, even when my problems overwhelmed me. But, despite that, there came a time when I walked away from her. It might not have even been all that long in reality but it felt like such a long time during that period that we weren't close like we once had been. I had other concerns in my life that made what I did make sense then, but, it retrospect, it was a stupid, stupid mistake. There are some things you can never completely make up and for me, that would be one of them, no matter how much Lily might have said otherwise.

We eventually worked through that rough spot, but it's never far from my mind, those decisions I made. I don't think there were enough chances to say I was sorry, not that she would have let me had I said something every time I did have the chance. She was far too forgiving but that's what made her that much more important to me.

If I had only known that day – the day before I woke up in my bed at home, in America – that it would be my last at Hogwarts, I would have gone and visited with her one last time. She would have smiled and hugged me and then conjured tea out of nowhere, because that's what Lily does for everything – joy, sorrow, anger, disappointment, fear, bafflement – she gives you tea. But it isn't just tea she gives and I didn't always appreciate that the way I should have. She might have only been a few years older than me in physical age, but she had lived more and known more in those years that were between us than most people lived and learned in half a lifetime. I had so much to learn from her that I never realized I did, until now.

There was so much left to do and say, I just... I just wish I had known then what I think about today, and everyday. I miss you, Lily, so very much.

Sarah Williams | Labyrinth | 663 words
muse_playground prompt #79
Comments here!

mylamefic.doc

2006-10-10T07:53:11Z

She learned the hard way some time ago that some secrets are never meant to be shared. Sometimes, it is clear when silence should be kept, such as when those she loved mocked her for her most treasured secret. It never seemed so strange to her to have friends that visited her by way of her vanity mirror. It baffled her then that those she loved simply thought she had just gotten good at throwing her voice and that bafflement has never died.

Now, her secrets are told to her journal and that volume is locked away because she is never quite certain what should be shared. That precaution used to seem enough until one secret changed it all and it was a secret she was certain should always be kept. She writes about it and then lets it burn in the fireplace when the rest of the world is asleep. The flames dance over the parchment at those times and it almost seems to her – she who has always had an excellent imagination – that the flames know her secret because of all the pieces of parchment she has burned in them.

The flames can never speak and so her secret is safe. It is better that way because there is a plan to life that cannot ever be tampered with. So she keeps her secrets and sometimes smiles a secret smile when no one is looking.

((This is part of a larger storyline within the HH universe that involved the characters knowing about fanfiction. This particular piece was part of a brief bit of RP where Sarah writes a fic to send to a friend.))

nopower_overme @ 2020-05-17T00:57:00

2006-05-17T05:09:35Z

Give me the child.
Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered,
I have fought my way here
to the castle beyond the Goblin City
to take back the child that you have stolen,
for my will is as strong as yours,
and my kingdom is as great.

You have no power over me.

((ooc: Anyone who would like to get in touch with Sarah's player can leave a comment here. Comments here are NOT screeened, for screened comments to protect plotty fun, comment here.))