Come out and Play (Chase & Anna)

[Annabelle Hennessy]

Anna walked past the greenhouses until she found the smallest one. She glanced around the deserted grounds and pulled her cloak a little tighter then headed around to the back. Chase hadn't arrived yet, so Anna took a moment to look around. She spotted a stone bench by some bushes and sat down to wait.

[Chase Firebrand]

The back of the greenhouse was close enough to the tree line for Chase to find easy cover. He'd had breakfast late enough today that he'd skipped lunch and come here while everyone else would be in the Great Hall. He wasn't entirely sure what he was doing, and nobody--nobody--needed to know. Especially not that viper from the Daily Prophet.

He watched Anna for some moments, still unable to figure her out. She was pretty, yes, but nothing exotic. Nothing extraordinary. It didn't seem to matter though, because he was drawn to her whether he wanted to be or not. She was so nice that it drove him crazy, but last night... He didn't want to think about last night. It was surreal and he preferred to block it from his mind. So why was he here? He needed to find out, that was why. He needed to find out what it was about her that interested him so much. No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't figure it out.

Chase stepped out of the shadows not far away from her, taking his time to cross the grass and sit wordlessly beside her. Words weren't his strong point, and over the past months it was even less of one. He never knew what to say anymore.

[Annabelle Hennessy]

Anna's face lit up when she saw Chase and turned to face him, her legs brushing against him when she shifted. All her emotions showed easily; happiness that he'd come, nervous excitement for what the afternoon might bring, and embarrassment for the butterflies that his presence always brought. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting long?" She asked, realizing that he came from the wrong direction so he must have been here before her.

[Chase Firebrand]

Chase leaned forward slightly to rest his elbows against his knees, letting his forearms come together so that his hands clasped lightly. It was a comfortable posture, and one he took often when he sat, a diametric opposition to the posture he'd been trained to have. Still, the easy grace showed through, whatever he tried.

"Not long," Chase said. He hadn't allowed himself to wait at all, actually. He'd been here, and he'd been doing what he'd have been doing otherwise; thinking. Brooding. He looked aside at Anna, unsure what to say. Conversation had come so much easier those first months before Dru, when... What had been the difference then?

[Annabelle Hennessy]

Anna could feel the tension in the air that was beginning to build, and wanted to squash it before it overwhelmed them. She thought about it for a moment, then chose a topic that was personal and would let Chase see into her life a little. "I received a letter from my lil sis the other day.She made a light bulb explode over my parents head when they grounded her from the telly. They were shocked they forgot they'd grounded her. She's seven, and we'd almost given up hope that she would be a wizard like me. I'm so happy for her, she's been unbearably jealous for the past few years."

[Chase Firebrand]

Chase's brows drew together a bit at that. It certainly wasn't her home life he was interested in. He couldn't for the life of him see what was so exciting about making a light bulb explode. He didn't even know what a light bulb was, nor a telly. He entirely missed the point of her story, not least because he didn't see what the big deal about one's powers coming in was. He didn't say a thing, but looked his question.

[Annabelle Hennessy]

Anna was confused by Chase's expression at first, then the differences in their backgrounds dawned on her, and she realized he probably didn't understand what she was talking about. "Well my dad's a muggle and my mom..." Anna paused at the word squib, hating the negative sound of it, "Isn't magical either. So when I showed magical powers as a toddler, my whole family was ecstatic. My sister is way past the age I was, so we thought she didn't have magic either." A huge smile came over Anna's face as she imagined the scene at her house when her sister proved them wrong. "I wonder who was more shocked, her or my parents, when she blew up the bulb...I'm sorry, do you even know what a light bulb is? I forget sometimes that wizards don't use electricity." She looked at Chase with interest, wondering how much he knew of muggle things. She knew he read muggle books, but those were fantasy, and didn't really give a good insight to muggle living.

[Chase Firebrand]

"No clue," Chase said when Anna had finally finished. "I don't know what a telly is, either." His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at her, rolling her words around in his mind for a moment or two. "But they're ekeltricity things?" he asked at last. He knew he butchered that word every time he said it, but he couldn't seem to get it right, and it wasn't like he really talked Muggle stuff with anyone in the first place. Chase wasn't particularly interested in hearing about the lives and times of people he didn't know, but if the conversation shifted the way it looked like it was shifting, he might actually be able to contribute something.

[Annabelle Hennessy]

Anna held back her grin. The way he said electricity was just so cute. "Yeah, they both are. Light bulbs are what muggles use instead of candles, they're like lamps, but they use electricity to glow instead of fire." She paused, biting her lip as she tried to figure out a way to explain the telly. "And the telly, um, you know what movies are right? Like the Matrix?" She remembered that he had dressed up as Neo, and had seemed like he knew about the concept of movies, even if he'd never seen one himself.

[Chase Firebrand]

Chase had followed light bulb even if he had no idea what they looked like or how ekeltricity made fire. The beginning of her description of telly threw him, though. Dru had told him that the Matrix was a movie, but he hadn't known until then. "I got that out of the back of a Muggle comic book," he said. "Apparently I did a decent job of it." Considering the unmoving Muggle picture he'd had to work with, anyway.

[Annabelle Hennessy]

"It was really good, I didn't recognize you at first." Anna had hoped that he'd known what a movie was already, it would have made explaining things easier. "I wish I had a telly to just show you, it'd be so much easier than trying to explain. It's a box that shows a moving picture with sound." She stopped again, trying to think of a better way to explain it. "You know how the wizarding wireless brings music through it? Well a telly is like that, but showing something like a theater show on it."

[Chase Firebrand]

Chase was confused now, though he tried not to show it as he straightened, looking down at Anna now rather than sideways. "I have no clue what you're talking about," he said, his brows furrowing again. "Is it a portrait, a box, or a theater?" He was sure he'd had movies explained to him at some point, but Anna had apparently abandoned that and moved back to his original inquiry about telly. "The wizarding wireless sends music through magic," he pointed out, trying to understand, "so how do Muggles do it?"

[Annabelle Hennessy]

Anna ran her hand through her hair, frustrated at not being able to explain something that was just part of her life. She was sure if she explained the different things used to record a show, she'd end up confusing herself as well at him. "It looks like a box with a picture frame on the front. Muggles use a special type of camera to take the picture and record the voices of the show, then they use the electricity to somehow get it to show up on the telly in muggle homes. It's hard to explain, I'm sorry." She bit her lip again, feeling bad for bringing something up, then not being able to explain fully what it meant.

[Chase Firebrand]

Chase blinked at that, murmuring some kind of assurance that she shouldn't be sorry as he resumed his previous position. This time his arms bent up rather than down, and his head dropped slightly as he looked unseeing into the grass. What she'd said this time made a little more sense to him. It sounded familiar, actually. He kept turning it over in his mind for some minutes before he made the connection and turned his head, looking back at Anna. "Is telly like tee vee?" he asked.

[Annabelle Hennessy]

Anna clapped her hands together with excitement as she straightened up, practically jumping off of her seat with excitement. "Yes! They're the exact same thing! It's called a television, but some people abbreviate it as TV or Telly, or a few other nicknames. So you know what it is then?" She smiled at him with twinkling eyes. It seemed kind of silly to get excited about something as simple as a Television, but it was part of her world, and he understood what she was talking about.