Levitated Rock Skipping

[Kellen McCrea]

When would a mindless activity like skipping rocks to pass time start to need more concentration? When you were controlling the rocks with your wand, of course, and want to make sure they don't levitate off on their own.

This had been Kellen's chosen activity for the last twenty minutes or so. Sitting on the shore, he'd been pointing at certain stones with his wand and sending them skipping as far as they could go across the calm waters. He'd tried to perform the trick without his wand, but that hadn't worked. He had, however, managed to do it without speaking, which was a neat advancement.

Leave it to Kellen to practice schoolwork while he was supposed to be leisuring. He directed another rock and sent it across the water wordlessly, but stopped. His mind really was elsewhere.

[Open!]

[Allegra Thornton]

{mine }

"Neat trick," Allegra said, coming up behind Kellen. She had decided to take advantage of the pretty day, by (what else) studying. She had grabbed her Arithmancy book and a big fuzzy towel and was ready to stake out her favorite spot on the rocks by the lake when she spotted him and changed course slightly.

[Kellen McCrea]

"Hmm?" Kellen murmered, taking just a moment to snap out of his thoughts and into reality. "Oh!" he exclaimed as he turned to see who'd spoken. He didn't know why he was surprised to see Allegra, but it caught him off guard. "Uh, hey! Thanks. It's kind of fun. I've been practicing for a while." He was uncharacteristically stumbling over his words, and that just flummoxed him further. "You should try it," he suggested finally.

[Allegra Thornton]

"I could never do it very well the regular way," Allegra told him, but she dropped her things on a nearby boulder and pulled her wand out of her pocket, willing to give it a try. "Is it any easier this way?"

[Kellen McCrea]

"Well..." Kellen trailed off for a moment. "It's more fun this way, at least, so does that count? Oh, plus, if you want to make it look like you're doing well, just control the movement the whole time. It's better if you can let it go and it skips on its own, though."

[Allegra Thornton]

"Okay," Allegra answered as if she weren't totally convinced, but willing to give it a try. She pointed her wand at a smooth, flat rock and shot it out towards the water. It didnt' look so bad on the first skip, but the farther it went along the surface, the more it looked like a rubber ball bouncing on the water. She finally decided to let the rock drop.

"Not bad for a first time?" she asked hopefully.

[Kellen McCrea]

Kellen nodded and gave a small, playful smile. "It looked good. Especially at the beginning there. Can't hurt to stick around and practice, though," he suggested. "Here," he said, getting to his feet so he could display better. "Don't move your wrist quite so much. Just a little bit ought to do it."

He shot out a stone of his own, trying to show her a good way to do the trick. He couldn't resist showing off just a bit, so he concentrated and directed the stone to turn around and skip back to them, landing right at their feet.

[Allegra Thornton]

"Wow!" Allegra said, genuinely impressed at the turn around. She took a deep breath as if preparing for a difficult exercise and pointed her wand at the rock Kellen had just returned.

She got a couple of decent skips out of it before it dove underwater, only to resurface again, jumping out of the lake like a fish on a line. It dropped and jumped again before plunging down into the lake for good. Allegra's shoulders slumped slightly and she turned to him with an apologetic smile. "I think I lost your rock."

[Kellen McCrea]

"No, now he's down there with all his other rock friends and probably having a great party or something," Kellen said in the kind of tone you might hear an earnest six-year-old use. "And at least he had a few good skips along the way, right?"

He looked back out on the lake for a minute before saying, "You know, I was thinking about you just before you came out here. I mean," he added, a little too quickly. "I was thinking about our plans for the Courtyard."

[Allegra Thornton]

Allegra snickered at the idea of a rock party, but it quickly caught in her throat when he continued his thoughts. "Me?... Oh..." she said, first with a bit of surprise (hopefulness?) and finishing with a tone of disappointment (relief?). She held her smile though as she answered.

"That's right. We haven't done that yet. You promised too," she told him, with just a hint of scolding.

[Kellen McCrea]

"And I plan to go through with it!" Kellen said, a little defensive at her scolding. He shifted a bit, trying to find a more comfortable position to sit in. "But, you know, this is the kind of thing that still needs plans. It can't be so spontaneous like our last dip into slight delinquence," he said, smiling at the memory of the toilet paper filled common room.

[Allegra Thornton]

"And do you have a plan?" she asked. She hadn't even thought of that, figuring they would just play it by ear.

But of course, now that she thought about it, that would never work. Of course it needed to be planned out. She just wasn't sure how.

[Kellen McCrea]

"Well, at the very least, if we're going to do magic we need to know what spells we're going to be doing, right? And if we don't know them, we should learn them." Kellen sighed. Now that he thought about it, that's...really all the planning he'd done. "That's really all the planning I've done," he admitted with a slight hint of defeat.

[Allegra Thornton]

"That's a lot more than I did," Allegra answered apologetically. "And I don't know too many prank type spells. I can to a spell for streamers... and color changing... and bubbles..." she added, thinking of what might be able to work.

[Kellen McCrea]

"Bubbles would be cool, and the colour changing of course," Kellen commented before giving a small frown. "But we probably shouldn't do too much, what with Ministry people walking around and all. They might think we're up to no no good at all."