Mainstream Streams Mainly Modern Posers And Post-Modern Junkies | Rose & Carmen
A smile. A small one, yes, but it was a smile Carmen had seen on Rose’s lips, so her little trick had worked. People were complicated. It didn’t work on everyone, but it did work on this one. Her eyes followed the redhead as she moved to lean against the wall. What was going on in her head? Carmen let her ponder for a moment in silence, swinging her feet ever so slightly so that her boots clacked against the stone wall. She supposed Rose’s thoughts had something to with her earlier question. Terrifyingly terrifying?
Sure enough, when the girl opened her mouth, Carmen knew she was right. The girl had her concerns about how powerful Carmen was, from the sound of things, and rightly so. For a such a sunshine-sweet little blonde, Carmen could pack a punch with a wand - far more than she let on in class. As far as she knew, no other fifth-year was capable of performing all three unforgivable curses, alongside other dark magic. Then again, they could have been hiding it like her, and she’d only used it on small creatures. Perhaps on people it was different. But all this was besides the point. The point was that Rose was suspicious of her, and she had to rectify that right away.
She started with the slight parting of the lips and the slumping of the shoulders, hurt. It couldn’t be overdone. Over-doing it never worked. Neither did rushing things. So she waited a second for the ‘sinking in’ phase before lowering her eyes and twisting her hands together nervously. There always had to be a moment to process the harsh remarks. Perhaps if her act had been the sharp-tongued bitch, or that of a confidant young woman, she could have gotten away with an instant response. But her act was that of a sweet young girl, a little delicate and shy, but with a smile of sunshine. So she let those few seconds of ‘reaction’ pass before stuttering out a reply.
“I d-didn’t mean to d-do that. I d-didn’t… I feel awful for hurting Lowe. I’m a horrible person.” Now if only she could let out a single tear right at that moment - but she couldn’t do those without a spell to help her out. Perhaps it was best that she didn’t, so as to not over-do it. Good actors excelled in subtlety. Small glances at Rose, looking away as if ashamed. Good good.
Next up was supposed to be assurances of ‘Oh sweety, of course you’re not’. That was how people generally worked: a statement of self-hatred followed by reassurances to the contrary. Unless, of course, the person meant to do the reassuring had a heart of ice. Some said that Rose Weasley did, but Carmen didn’t believe it. If anyone had a heart of ice, it was the blonde on the windowsill, not the redhead next to her. She was positive that Rose had more than enough compassion to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Rose didn’t look at Carmen while she spoke, instead choosing to frown at the opposite wall. As the blonde spoke, she creased her forehead even more with every word until it resembled a piece of paper that had been scrunched up and then somebody had attempted to flatten it out again but it refused to be straight. One the one hand she was sure that her own frustrated dilemmas were influencing how she was responding to Carmen. On the other, it had honestly scared her that she could cast such a horrific incantation. Moreover, it was seemingly an impulse reaction type thing, in which she panicked and cast it because of Lowe coming on to her. Not in a billion years would she ever ever agree with that slimeball’s actions being okay, but… but wouldn’t something a little less harmless have done?
Still frowning and unable to come to a conclusion, she opened her mouth and hesitated - a hesitation which she then let turn to a fairly long pause, before finally speaking.
“One bad thing doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person,” she started, her words lacking the confidence that was usually present in her voice. “Maybe just a person who needs to be careful.” She turned to Carmen then, still frowning but giving her more of a questioning gaze, as if to ask if she had said the right thing or not. Had she known how and been less creeped out by what had happened, she might have better comforted the girl. However she didn’t and she was and the only comfort she can offer Carmen is another frustrated sigh to add to the huge number of frustrated sighs she had already sighed that one day. And it wasn’t as if the sigh would actually offer comfort - it was just her being consumed in her own problems once more, which led her to wondering if her self centeredness was why she couldn’t see past what Carmen had done to see the apologetic, innocent little girl that… she hoped (and presumed) was definitely there. Surely anything otherwise was a bad headache paired with a trick of the light.
Pinching and massaging the bridge of her nose, she apologised, “Sorry. I just want people to be aware of how dangerous spells like that are. But — yeah,” she finished lamely, annoyed that she couldn’t even focus enough to form a decent sentence. She didn’t consider herself a master wordsmith at any level, but liked to think she was a bit better than having just ‘but — yeah’ as her reasoning behind something. (Except she wasn’t doing particularly well with reasoning as of late.)
“Then again, I suppose Wynters is thrilled that one of his students can actually produce something, even if it isn’t strictly defense against the dark arts,” she chuckled, and treated herself to a tiny smirk; pleased at the fact that she could at least manage some humour. And picking fun at her least favourite teacher too. (Oh how she longed to actually do some proper work in his class.)
