do-wah-doo / CLAIRE

[Priyanka Sharma]

There was nothing quite like the beach to give one the feeling of summer, and Priyanka had tossed aside her books for the afternoon in order to celebrate the fact that the sun was at its peak in the sky and there was absolutely no school and not even that many responsibilities to deal with. She'd had to, of course, insist to her parents that yes, she was only meeting Claire, and no, she wouldn't stay out too late, and yes, she knew to come home straight away if there were any problems whatsoever, but once she had managed to wriggle out of their clutches, she found herself stretched out on the sand in just about no time, with the sun beating down upon her, a pair of sunglasses perched on her nose, feeling that finally her summer was kicking off as summer was supposed to do. 

She didn't quite suit the beach, and she was aware of the fact. As opposed to wearing a swimming suit or shorts, she remained in rather a long skirt, and her hair was scraped back rigidly, a fine contrast to the beach-goers surrounding them, all of whom seemed thoroughly relaxed, faces red and hair flopping into their eyes. Priya, however, took something akin to pride and joy at making sure that her appearance was spotless, and she positively loathed having her hair tumbling down around her face. The skirt was mainly due to the fact that she'd bought it very recently - she'd never been the most interested in fashion, but it was beautiful, a deep, rich red colour, made of the softest material, and it gave the illusion of her legs being longer than they actually were. She wasn't keen to loll about in her swimming suit, either - she had it on under her clothes, merely as a precaution, because she didn't fancy the look of herself in it at all. She was slim, of course, but she found her body shape terribly odd - she felt so gangly. It wasn't just her attire that made her seem out of place on the beach, however. It was her poise, the fact that when she sat up her posture remained as flawless as ever and her movements seemed all very graceful and calculated. 

Contrary to how she looked, however, she was enjoying herself immensely, a book propped up on her knees and sipping ginger ale. The heat was getting to her somewhat, however - she was finding it a bit difficult to keep her concentration on the book when it was just so bloody warm and the beach was buzzing with people. Therefore, she gave up, instead opting to chuck the book in Claire's general direction and saying, resting her chin on her knees, "So, Claire, d'you think after this summer we'll come back all worldly and wise as fourth years? Boys falling at our feet, the masses writhing with jealousy..."

[Claire Powell]

Being outside, in the fresh summer breeze with the sun on her back and the beach stretched out in front of her, Claire thought this had to be the nicest, warmest summer England had ever seen. Granted, she'd only seen fourteen English summers so far in her life, but given that she was out at the beach with one of her best friends, she wasn't sure how it could get much better. She kicked her legs in the sand, lying stretched out face-down on her beach towel and enjoying the feeling of sand between her toes as she sunk her feet down. Placing her head on her crossed arms in front of her, she tilted her face to observe Priyanka.

She couldn't deny sometimes feeling a bit envious of how sophisticated Priya always looked, with her pretty warm brown skin and tall and slender physique, plus how well she carried herself. She knew most of it came from Priya's upbringing, though, and given that Claire herself had grown up alongside a boy - especially when like...well, like Ben - rather than six years younger it made sense that Claire seemed a lot less graceful in comparison. She and Ben had constantly been playing out in the gardens when they were kids, tumbling around and getting mud everywhere, and as a result, Claire was both super bouncy and super clumsy now that she was a teenager (and wasn't that weird? Even though she'd been one for over a year now) and finally growing into her body. The outcome of this all was that Claire and Priyanka made a rather mismatched pair of best friends, but she didn't think she'd actually change that, if she could, just because she loved her friendship with Priya exactly as it was.

Claire shoved the book away from her towel, rolling her eyes and laughing as she shifted so she was lying more on her side than on her stomach. "Yes, we'll be the most popular girls in Hogwarts," she agreed jokingly, brushing sand off her sundress - it was her favorite, and she had to save it for the summer because there wasn't much of an opportunity to wear such short, casual dresses once summer ended and the British winds seized control again - and smiling up at Priya. "Why, are there any boys you want to fall at your feet?" she giggled, genuinely curious. There was no shortage of handsome boys at Hogwarts, both in their year and above, and Claire had definitely had her fair share of crushes over the past year or so. Still, boys seemed like an entirely different species at time, inhabiting their own strange world of ditching classes and drinking beer and making really stupid jokes, so she had yet to have any real experience with any of them that wasn't Ben, or one of Ben's few friends.

[Priyanka Sharma]

"Are you saying we're not the most popular girls in Hogwarts already?" Priyanka demanded, although her tone was light and very obviously joking, one eyebrow quirked slightly. She knew perfectly well she was neither bubbly enough nor hilarious enough nor downright wild enough to be popular. Plus, she was far too good to ever have such status in her year. "Maybe we'll both go off the deep end. We are proper teenagers, after all. Get a piercing or two, try out illegal substances, ditch class..." she kept her expression inscrutable for a minute before laughing, pulling a rather unattractive face for a minute and stretching out her long legs underneath the sun, wriggling her toes. "Or maybe not."

At Claire's giggle and question, a face popped into Priyanka's mind, but she very firmly pushed it out. Valentin was horrendously, appallingly good-looking, but first off, he was two years older, and second off, he was - oh, hell, he was too outgoing and utterly golden and cool for a girl like her. That, and the thought of having something so childish as a crush was seriously off-putting. It sounded so vulnerable. And so she shot a teasing glance at Claire and said, very solemnly, "That's it. Can't hide it anymore. I just can't mask my burning passion for your brother." She faked a swoon, falling back onto the sand with her hand pressed to her forehead, and then dissolved into laughter. "And what about you, then?" She returned the question, twisting onto her side in order to get a proper look at Claire. "Any boys strike your fancy? If you can find one mature enough," she tacked on, throwing her eyes up to the heavens. Goodness knew the boys in their year acted as though they were about half their age - she got along with most boys perfectly well in terms of friendship, but she couldn't imagine anything romantic with a decent percentage of them. "I'll never quite understand the charm of fourteen-year-old boys," she confided in her friend, sitting upright and stretching. "Obsessed with dirty jokes and chucking out vulgar phrases when they aren't even necessary at any given moment. And smelly," she added primly, glossing over the fact that she nearly always got the dirty jokes and was usually the one smirking to herself, head bowed slightly, when a vulgar joke was made.

[Claire Powell]

"We definitely are," Claire agreed solemnly, "We are the queen bees. The cream of the crop. The ones every boy wants and every girl wants to be." Her sentence sputtered off into a giggle, unable to keep up the poker face for so long, and she collapsed in laughter. Truthfully, she didn't even really want to be popular, she just liked having friends, and she enjoyed her little corner of Hogwarts with Priya and her brother and her other friends far too much to trade it in for popularity like the kind in those teen drama books she liked to read. Granted, they all had a rather negative depiction of popularity, anyway.

"That's what we should do!" she exclaimed in fake delight, throwing her head back and laughing. "We should get tattoos and start drinking alcohol, go totally crazy," she agreed, tracing patterns in the sand near her head with her fingers. "I've always wanted a tattoo," she said musingly, no longer entirely joking. "Except I'm terrified of needles, so maybe I could find a magical way to do it..."

Claire shook her head of its wandering thoughts and tuned back in to level a thoroughly unimpressed look at her best friend. "Priya," she said, mock scolding. "You are so out of Ben's league. Don't even joke with me," she said, but ended up giggling anyway despite her words, as the thought of Priya and Ben seemed utterly absurd to her. So did the thought of Ben dating in general, but that was another matter. She paused, considering the question. There were quite a number of boys she found cute, most of them in the years above, but she was smart enough to know she didn't stand a chance with them, no matter how friendly they were in the common room or in the library or the hallways. But the boys in her year were so... "I agree," she sighed, propping her chin on her hands. "Maybe they'll have grown up some this year, though probably not, if Ben is anything to go by." Well, that wasn't quite fair, her brother was probably a lot more mature than most of the other boys in their year, but as he was already at a level above them in maturity, he hadn't increased in maturity much, and she doubted the others had, either. "The smell is the worst, though," she laughed, thinking back to her one stop in the fourth year boys' dormitory last year for homework and making a face at the memory. "If they start showering more often this year, maybe I'll give them half a chance. That's if Ben doesn't glare them away first, of course."

[Priyanka Sharma]

"Queen bees..." Priya murmured, a rather thoughtful expression rolling onto her face. "It's weird, isn't it, how there always has to be some sort of hierarchy? Although hierarchy sounds a bit - " she pulled a face - "serious for school. Even so, though, there's always some sort of Queen Bee milling around. Who d'you think are the Queen Bees?" She wasn't usually so privy to idle gossip, but it wasn't as though she was slandering anyone - merely curious. She liked thinking about how the world worked, and knowing things about people. It was useful, the sort of information she could store up in her mind. Plus, she did think it was completely bizarre that certain people could just seem untouchable, so cemented in themselves that everyone else simply followed at their heels.

"I expect this will be the year everyone will start drinking," Priya noted. "Have you ever drank?" Priyanka had had a sip of wine once but she wasn't entirely sure that it counted. "You know, I once ran into a girl in one of the years above, and she was absolutely mullered, just out in the corridor, she'd come from some party or something -" she confided in her friend, one eyebrow slightly raised, although a grin was unfurling on her face. "I can't deny it, even though she looked a complete mess, I was sort of jealous. I've never been to a proper party. Don't think I'd drink, though." She glanced over at her friend in interest. "I think I've heard of magical tattoos," she said seriously. "They'd probably still hurt, though. I'm sure there are temporary ones, too. Goodness knows if we can get playing cards that explode, we can get those."

Priyanka didn't necessarily think she was too good for Ben, but the two of them together was absurd. No, Priyanka liked to get things right, and for things to be proper in order. She wanted - perhaps as ridiculous or childish or naive as it sounded - to be in love, or at least to care very deeply for someone, and the boy had to be just right. People said that you couldn't pick who you fell in love with, but Priyanka knew perfectly well she wasn't going to lower her standards or pick the first boy she ran into. She wanted something extraordinary. "Don't be ridiculous, you adore Ben," Priya reminded her friend sternly. "But no, he's certainly not the right boy for me. I want the right boy - not that I need a boy at all," she added hastily. "Some of the boys in the year above are quite handsome, though," she allowed. It was less embarrassing to talk about those boys, because they wouldn't look at her anyways. It was like talking about a movie star or a musician. "I always thought Scorpius Malfoy was handsome," she told her friend, gazing at the sky. "He wasn't supposed to be the nicest bloke, though...still. Roxanne Weasley was lucky. And who else - " she was absolutely not going to mention Valentin, " - that Julian, two years above. A bit grouchy-seeming, but clever. You need someone a bit clever, don't you?" Priyanka, who held personal hygiene in very high regard, made a face. "They'd have to shower more. I think we ought to stall this conversation, though," she tacked on smoothly. "Otherwise we'll start imagining them in the shower."

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ooc. seeing as faye is being mean about julian i thought priya ought to show support for his pretty wee face xo