[Lawns] Whirlwind

[Anthony Evans]

Anthony's dorm-mates were cruel and unforgivable creatures. They had taken to sending him Howlers mimicking his mother's voice, and the worst of them happened to find him just as he was about to seal a Hogsmeade date with Poppy Cross. Needless to say, the date was rescheduled... for never.

Sulking, Anthony lay sprawled on his back with his arms and legs stretched out at his sides. The sun was hot on his neck, and he moaned as if he were truly mournful and depressed - he was the melodramatic sort.

The worst part of it all was he'd exchanged secret duels and exploding snap for studying. The O.W.Ls were an ever looming presence, and Anthony hadn't had fun in ages because of it. Grumbling even louder at this unwelcome revelation, he turned on his side.

"The sun is hot, I'm going to fail my O.W.Ls, and Poppy Cross was going to pay for the butterbeers." He sounded exaggerated, and overtly concerned, but it faded when his frowning eyes caught sight of a small whirlwind of dirt right next to his face. "Huh? What is that?"

All traces of tragedy were gone as he pulled himself into a sitting position, the small tornado of soil growing larger with each frantic spin.

[Jinx Collen]

The whirlwind swept madly across the grounds, jaggedly corrupting the lawns of Hogwarts. First it would swerve one way, then dart another with no clear pattern. 'I think I'm gonna be sick...', she thought queasily, but it was all worth it in the long run. This morning she'd seen that the Seventh Year Herbology class was working on an advanced gardening project for their graduation projects, it was only a matter of time before it came to Jinx's attention that the rest of the school was far too pretty for the excess glamor of the moonlace, nightshade, and other dark horticulture frills. She had to do something about it, clearly.

On and on the small tornado spun until something caught its attention. A lone Gryffindor, clearly moping for some reason. Were the Slytherins back on their hate mail spree? That was her gig! Those posers...though it was bound to happen, surely. One person on campus sending prank howlers was clearly imbalance, eventually equilibrium would have to find a medium again. At least things were adjusting themselves for once. Keeping balance was such a difficult job for one student! Leaving a trail of mulchy destruction behind her, Jinx spun on until she stopped at the feet of the lounging Gryffindor.

"Hello--ohh..." Jinx's knees buckled and she fell to the ground, the end traces of her tornado throwing fresh soil all over her. "Note to self, next time the Herbology class plants midnight primroses, just use an earthquake spell to turn the lawns back into an ungroomed planter lot." She held her head, face pale, eyes glassy. She informally flopped her head over to look at the Gryffindor boys... how many of them were there? Two? Twelve? "Excuse me... oh, my head..." she closed her eyes to stop the spinning. "Umm, I hate to be a bother, but could you spell me some water or something? I think I'm about to... ohh... faint... ugh..." Her face crunched up as a fresh wave of nausea hit her. "I'd...ergh...do it myself but...oi...I think I might accidentally conjure a hurricaine right now..."

[Anthony Evans]

"Hey!"

Anthony tensed as a spray of dirt distorted his hair and robes, leaving an obvious smudge on his cheeks. Wiping it off determinedly, the Gryffindor used one eye to give the girl an appraising look. "What's wrong with primroses? I thought girls loved those..." His eyes widened as she toppled in a tangle of limbs, breathing erratically.

"And now what are you looking at?" She seemed to be addressing him, but her head was angled off to the side, watching the neighbouring air. Turning his neck self-consciously, Anthony raised a hand and swiped it through nothingness. She was seeing things, he was sure, and Anthony immediately had to hold back the smile threatening his features. "...You're a bit mad, aren't you?"

Realising he was the one waving his arm around into nothing, he abruptly dropped it. "Anyway, you do realise you already were a tornado. I'm not sure it would matter if you spontaneously became a hurricane now - there's no more destruction for you to cause." Anthony pulled out his wand and conjured a glass of water. Or, he hoped it was water. The clear liquid was bubbling, slowly turning a violent shade of emerald as it reached the top of the tall glass. "Er... I'm sure it's fine. Here!"

Thrusting it in her hands nervously, Anthony watched anxiously. But before she could take a sip, one of the bubbles reached the meniscus and immediately turned leafy. A thorny stem emerged next, at least a foot high, before a bulbous primrose settled on the tip of it.

Anthony laughed suddenly. "Looks like Hogwarts is punishing you!" He paused, regarding her seriously. "That or my magic is terrible..."

[Jinx Collen]

"Ohh, snorkacks!" she cursed, finally letting gravity have its way and force her to the disastrous lawn. She closed her eyes tightly, moaning as waves of vertigo and threats of bile washed over her. "You know, that's actually a good idea," she flicked her wand, "Aquamenti!"

As would be expected, a cluster of dark storm clouds formed just above the two students. Lightning flashed in a ten foot radius immediately around them, then the clouds burst open and drenched the pair, also drenching the still growing primrose. Large yellow blooms sprouted and the roots broke the bottom of the glass, seeping into the freshly turned soil Jinx had so aptly prepared for it. "Crumpets..." she muttered as the flower continued to grow, reaching and expanding across a great length of the crevice she had just dug into the lawns. It's stem began stretching and curling over and around itself until it was a giant maze of foliage and sunny blooms.

Jinx sat up... and found herself sitting on top of a giant primrose leaf. She was feeling much better after the spontaneous storm she'd conjured mostly accidentally. She looked over for the Gryffindor boys, but only saw one young man in scarlet robes. "Where'd your friends go? They didn't go get the nurse did they? Oh, I swear, I'm so sick of getting dragged up to the infirmary every time someone gets nervous about a little motion sickness, or small mushroom cloud explosion, or threat of fire slug pox... it's nothing to get worked up over! Everybody gets sick sometimes...and those who don't should, just take a chill pill people!" she was talking more to her self than she was to the boy as she stood and shook the soil off her robes.

[Anthony Evans]

Anthony brushed off a hazardous umbrella of petals that had settled onto his head, entwining in his hair. He stared at them, both stricken and disturbed. One spell - just one - and suddenly thick tubules spun across the lawns like needlework. "What's a snorkack!... Oh, crumpets. I know those." He said distractedly, trying to ignore the fact she was now seated on an enormous primrose as though she were the Queen of leaf litter.

The storm drowned her voice in thick streams of rain until he had to climb one of the gigantic stems to hear her. "My friends? They're trolls, you don't want to meet them..." His former spite returned to his tone, but by her constant babbling, Anthony wasn't so sure what she was talking about anymore. "Er... maybe we should get you to the nurse," he mused, mostly to himself.

Though he expected the storm to subside now that she looked like she felt loads better, it only grew. Anthony watched in horror as the primroses' roots grew so large that they became unearthed. They were hollow, he noticed, and large enough for them to fit inside if they crawled.

"That's brilliant," he breathed. "Hey, Loony! Come look at this." He dragged his arms and knees to one of the protruding roots, peering inside.

[Jinx Collen]

Jinx's face wrinkled with disgust at the mention of calling the nurse, "That's completely unnecessary. I'm fine, just fine... wait, your friends are trolls? Do you think they;d be interested in learning ballet? I keep walking past that tapestry on the Seventh floor and I'm terribly curious about if it's actually possible to... What'd you find?" she asked, completely forgetting about her previous thought. She took hold of the large stem she was standing next to, then jumped off her perch and slid to the ground like a fire pole.

"What'cha got there?" she asked, crawling over beside the boy. "Wow, it's like a giant hamster habitat!" she exclaimed gleefully as she observed the way the roots had grown above ground creating archways and tunnels. "You know, I've never thought it was quite fair that hamsters should have all the fun of getting to live in a giant maze. Why don't they get castles? Why don't we get giant fun parks? This is pretty awesome though..." she said as she grabbed hold of the top of the root and crawled inside. "Hey, check this out!" she said, grabbing the Gryffindor boy by his arm and dragging him inside with her. "Look."

She pointed up, to the other end of the hollow root, where the branches and stems of the giant buttercup plant had criss-crossed and spiraled themselves into a giant jungle gym, complete with stem slides and and leaf trapezes. A hazy, dark blue glimmer shined in her eyes and she smiled at the boy, "Race you to the top!" She paused only long enough for his eyes to accept her challenge, and then she was off, climbing up a pair of plants that had strong leaves jutting out every few feet like a giant green ladder.

[Anthony Evans]

"I had a pet hamster once..." Anthony responded bemusedly to her strange replies. "My mom thought she was so clever, naming it Dog."

Before he knew it, he was facing the elaborate jungle gym. His fists automatically clamped over one of the burly stems, eyes jumping to the top. He swallowed thickly. There was no way he was letting Jinx know he was terrified of heights. With that thought in mind, he took his first step, trying his hardest to keep his eyes focused on the spindly leaves instead of the drop below.

The moment he looked, however, he paused. The jungle gym seemed to teeter, taunting him. As if sensing his fright, it started to disintegrate, turning into dusty cracked leaves. Anthony and Jinx were suspended in the air for the briefest of seconds, before they fell to the ground.

Two of the trapezes swung between them, creaking almost hauntingly. Anthony stared past it, gazing at Jinx curiously, then reached for it with a hand. As soon as he did, the grainy leaf dust merged together, creating a vicious quicksand.

"What the--" The trapeze clattered in his hand, while a vacuum absorbed his feet. With wide eyes, Anthony clasped his other hand onto it. "I've never used one of these before," he said breathlessly, feeling his foot freeing from the trap below.

He had a feeling Jinx was all too aware of them.

[Jinx Collen]

Jinx was nearly giddy with excitement as parts of the structure began to disintegrate and seep back into the ground. "This is amazing! It's like the grounds are trying to swallow us whole for disrupting the natural balance of things. Here," she leaped off the makeshift ladder and grabbed onto one of the trapezes. "Now how do they do this in the circus again?" she queried herself as she swung back and forth, "Oh yeah!" She pulled her legs up through her arms and hooked them around the acrobatic apparatus, then let go with her hands and reached for the boy, "Grab on!" she called out, but quickly realized that there was a good four foot gap between their hands, and her swinging back and forth wasn't helping much.

She pulled out her wand and aimed it at the trapeze, "Pando!" A white ball of light surged into the trapeze and made it glow, the the swinging leaf grew down towards the sandy pit, the length slowing down the swing of the trapeze. She reached out again and could nearly grab the boy's hand. "You're gonna have to reach, darling," she said, her voice fading as she swung away and strengthening as she swung back across the pit. "I've done all I can for ya."

Something overhead rustled in the leaves. Jinx lifted her head in an upswing to try and see what it was, but only caught a shadow of something large, with wings, that was making a humming sounds in the upper part of the plant behind some flowers. "Um... you might want to hurry up because it looks like we might have some unwelcomed company soon... or rather... we are some unwelcomed company that might be evicted soon from that... thing's home. Just hurry up so we can get outta here, eh?"

[Anthony Evans]

The swinging echoed, ricocheting off muddy walls as easily as Jinx had. Craning his neck for the exit, suddenly finding the primrose dungeon way more morbid than he'd first thought, his eyes only met the sloping cave walls. "Trapped." He uttered, an inaudible sound behind Jinx performing the spell.

With out any other choice, Anthony frantically clasped her hands, feeling suddenly weightless. "Okay," he was breathless, eyes squeezed shut. "This isn't so bad..."

On the arc downwards, however, the humming grew obscenely close. Anthony opened his eyes reluctantly and found himself staring at a gigantic, brooding, pair of eyes. They blinked once, before a pair of fangs were suddenly revealed. "Hey! Hey get us down from here!" Anthony cried, unable to pull his gaze away from the enormous, hairy butterfly in front of him.

In all honestly, it wasn't scary at all, but Anthony felt fear and adrenaline rush through his body. "This is all your fault! Why did you have to know gymnastics?!" Anthony cried, feeling relief flood him as soon as they swung back to the other end.

...Speaking of flooding. "Did you hear that?" Twigs crackled against a fierce rumble below them. Against his better judgment, Anthony peered down at the floor, a sickening feeling in his stomach. "Oh hell. Look!" It was expected, really, being in a root and all, but Anthony was not ready to get washed away by a tidal wave.

Just before they were washed away, probably to be gone forever, the monstrous butterfly knocked them onto its wings. Anthony grabbed Jinx's hand with a startled expression, falling onto the leathery limbs unceremoniously.

A second later, they were riding the waves deeper into the root, the butterfly acting like a raft below them.

[Jinx Collen]

Squealing as they plummeted into the root-rapids, Jinx clung tightly to the hand Anthony had offered her. With her other hand she grabbed the front edge of one of the butterfly's wings and hung on for dear life. Not as soon as they had landed from the first wave, a second one came out of nowhere and pushed them onward toward a nasty looking drop off ahead. A short "squeak" escaped Jinx as her stomach leaped up somewhere in her head, making her dizzy again as their insectoid flotation device plummeted down deeper into the dark, cavernous root system of the primrose. The sunlight began slipping away above them as the strange current flushed them onward, knocking them back and forth in an unruly attempt to throw them from the back of their raft. The water splashed up, making it hard to hang on to the makeshift hand hold Jinx had unwittingly dug into the butterfly's wing with her nails, and she nearly slipped off a couple times before the current slowed down at all.

Looking around, Jinx felt ill. To begin with, she had still been a bit loopy from her tornado ride when she ended up on this demonic water slide. Additionally, it was so dark it made her physically nauseous, and that was before you added the 'underground/underground water' smell to the mix. Finally, a thought crossed her mind that frightened her terribly, "Um... my little tornado didn't cause all this, did it? I mean... I only meant to tear up the first couple layers of soil, y'know? I didn't mean to change the natural landscape like this..."

Quite shortly, not enjoying the dark anymore, Jinx released her tight grip of the butterfly (not quite ready to release her companion yet, who knew what was down here?!) and drew her wand, "Lumos!" The tip of her wand lit, but the darkness drowned it out almost immediately around them. Jinx waved her wand again and chanted, "Lumos Maxima!" Her wand exploded with cool blue light, like those energy efficient light bulbs her sister was always demanding for her art room--"It's a cleaner light so the colors and shapes show up better," she would say. Jinx thought it was a bunch a hooey normally, but right now she understood. What she saw once the cave lit up left her rather speechless...

[Anthony Evans]

"Now this is gross."

Anthony's voice was a mixture of bewilderment and amazement. There was also a bit of boyish mirth evident in his tone, and he snickered at the tightening of Jinx's grip. "At least it's not scary," he remarked jovially, eyes roaming the cave.

There were at least fifty gigantic earthworms, thick in width and stretching across the cave's floor easily. They moved sluggishly, a slick mucus coat attracting dirt to their bodies - almost like maggots. "Really gross," Anthony corrected, climbing off the butterfly's wings onto the 'shore', which was only a large expanse of soil.

The cave seemed to stretch forever, and even though Anthony squinted, he couldn't see the other end of the tunnel. Shrugging, the Gryffindor took a few steps forward when suddenly one of the earthworms let out a shrill screech.

Alarmed, he stumbled back and almost at once, the earthworms began slithering in unattractive swirls and patterns over the cavern floor. In their trail, they left quickly blooming flowers and hedges that grew so tall, they reached the cave's high ceiling in a matter of seconds. In fact, by the looks of if, Anthony could have sworn the earthworms were fertilizing an intricate maze right before their eyes.

"Nevermind," Anthony hurriedly turned around to face Jinx, his eyes wide while is expression remained humorously cross. "Let's just get back on this thing and face those wild tides again - you know, I've gone wake-boarding, it's not too different--"

The butterfly seemingly became annoyed and tossed Jinx onto the shore as well. Almost as abruptly, it flew away with a disconcerting clicking noise and left the two to fend for themselves.

"Oh, this is just brilliant," Anthony stared at the path before him, carved between two tall, never-ending, shrubs.

[Jinx Collen]

"I guess that race to the top is officially out of the question?" she guessed before being unceremoniously thrown into the muck beside Anthony. "Yep. Completely out of the question..." she said looking ahead of themselves at the make shift maze. "First things first," she said and scourgifyed her robes of the mucus-y soil. Then to tackle the hedge problem, "Incendio!" A stream of flames leaped from the tip of her wand and should have set fire to the underground garden.

But of course that would have been simple, and being attacked by a tidal wave in the middle of the Hogwarts lawns and thrown down an underground river that shouldn't exist on the back of an impossibly large butterfly isn't hard enough.

"Well, from the looks of it, we don't have much choice, eh?" and with that she trudged forward into the maze ahead. "You wouldn't happen to have any brilliant strategies to get oneself out of an... immaculately hedged underground maze, would you?" she asked, noting that every bush, vine, and topiary that had popped up was exactly matched to each other, perfectly trimmed, not a leaf out of place. "Okay, so Muggles have this story about a Demon Barber of Fleet Street... That wouldn't happen to be based on any real-life demon hedge trimmers of the Hogwarts underground, would it?" she asked curiously, trying to think if she knew any zombie vanquishing spells.

As they walked further into the maze, lightning bugs the size of Jinx's head began to flit around, lighting up the strange path they were on. 'Not like I mind the extra light,' she thought 'But if the fireflies are that big, I would rather not meet any mosquitoes down here.' The glowing bugs drifted back and forth and up and down and all around willy nilly, until they reached a point where the road they were on opened up into a small clearing. On the opposite side of the clearing were two pathways, one surrounded by honeysuckle, the other heralded by a rose archway sprouting bright blue blossoms.

"Which way do we go?" Jinx asked as she stepped further into the clearing. As she approached, the pathway behind her began growing over itself until it was a solid shrubbery wall again. Even more curious was down the honeysuckle pathway a loud groaning noise could be heard in the distance, and down the rose way a high pitched, howling sort of a whistle emanated. Jinx turned to her companion. "You choose."