Like Clockwork PV Isaiah Lewis Closed

Isaiah had headed down to the grounds again, alone. It was quite a long walk from his dormitory in the Gryffindor common room, and he had set out as soon as he had finished his Charms homework, desperate to get away from the stuffiness inside.
Alas, outside, the heat of midday had come out in full force, and Isaiah would bet that it was hotter out here than it was in there. Rays of the sun thrust itself at Isaiah’s face, as if he were a magnet, and found its way to the rest of his body, like a hungry, cold-sucking leech. The heat found its way to the grass as well, sending heat waves rolling off the lawn of green in a disorientating way.

The temperature was unbearable, and though Isaiah knew he could go back to the coolness of the dorm’s, and perhaps start on his Transfiguration, he couldn’t bear to sit down for another minute, and he would, soon enough, succumb to boredom.
So Isaiah had decided to fight the sun and stay out in the grounds for a little longer. He sat in the shade of a tree, his ebony-coloured legs sprawled out in front of him, and his fingers idly making criss-crossing lines in the grassy dirt. His head was bent, away from the sun’s hot glare, and eyebrows furrowed, focusing on his drawings.
The sky was very blue; there was not a cloud in it. The castle was silhouetted against it in a dark grey line, seemingly far away, and there was the noise of chattering students as they wandered around the grounds, talking with friends. It made Isaiah lonely to think that he wasn’t in one of those groups and furthered his boredom. He looked up, squinting against the sun, and surveyed the area, trying to find something that would capture his interest.

Not that far away from Isaiah was a blanket, with a girl atop of it. She had an Asian appearance, with dark almond eyes and slightly lighter hair, and a thin build, very unlike Isaiah’s bulky one. Next to the girl, on top of the blanket, were many pieces of metal. She held pliers in her hand and seemed to be fidgeting with the metal.
Isaiah frowned. He didn’t disapprove of the activity in any sort of way; in fact, Isaiah was a builder as well, when it came to cogs and gears; but it seemed rather out of place in a school of magic, where people used their wands instead of their hands, and most ignored muggle-like objects.

Isaiah’s hands immediately found their way to his neck, where an old, bronze chain lay, rather thin, and corroding from age. Linked to it was a compass, hidden underneath his black school robes, with a thick, double-ended arrow pointing out north and south. This object, decidedly muggle-like, was the thing that had first introduced Isaiah to the world of meddling. Many had told Isaiah to not bring his chain to Hogwarts, as they feared that he’d get teased for having such a metal-like object. But Isaiah wasn’t easily swayed and had brought it all the same.

Isaiah stood up, out of the shade of the tree, and had peered closely at the girl. With a start, he realised that she was a Second Year. She had left the blanket to receive a runaway piece but returned to her blanket soon after. Isaiah re-thought his idea of approaching the girl. She was older than him, would she think him silly? Deciding that a conversation would be worth it, because how many people in Hogwarts were likely to have the same hobby?, Isaiah approached the girl.
“Hullo,” he started, crouching down so that he was level with the girl and her scattering of pieces. "Sorry if I’m interrupting, but, what are you building?"

Usus est magister optimus.

Scowling as she yet again found a bit of skin on her palm raw from the friction on the pliers, the young Ravenclaw placed her project on the blanket before her, shaking out her hand and taking a drink from the glass water bottle by her side that she'd somehow managed to not knock over. Yet. The icy coolness calmed the redness that had long since bloomed on her skin, and she thought once again to thank the stars that she'd found a spot of shade instead of needing to sit out under the harsh sun while she worked. Still, rays of light reflected off her metal pieces, and the heat radiated across the Grounds. Yes, she would still much rather do this in her dormitory, or at least the Library. The librarians didn't seem to mind all the space she took up. Usually.

Actually, now would be a good step in the process of dissecting things to jot down a note, or if the time allowed for it a diagram, in her notebook. Cel set the water bottle down, careful not to let any overflowing water splash out, drying her hands on the blanket beneath her, then returned to lever a piece out of its place. She considered for a couple of seconds, then decidedly placed it inside of the pocket on her shirt—the screws she could replace, but other parts were harder, or at least just more tedious, to find elsewhere.

Several of the parts reflected light enough that she had to squint her eyes to properly copy down its visage, but she did it nonetheless, the cylinder's cogs and pieces captured down in light, feathered strokes and labeled with doctor scribbles that few people could actually read, herself sometimes included. Sometimes. The sketch was quick, not particularly detailed, featuring precise angles and little shading, but still showed the artist in her—the stylistic thickening and thinning of her pencil was unavoidable. She could never do this with a quill.

Now to continue. The girl set down her pliers in favor of a philips-head screwdriver, loosening another part of the cylinder, cursing as the screw fell from her sight onto the blanket. Sure, maybe it wasn't as important, but that didn't mean she wanted to lose it—she'd have to go through the long and arduous process of writing home, waiting for a response, and finding the exact sizes of the screws, not to mention needing to wait until the screws got there to put it back together, by which time she'd probably have lost the entire thing anyway.

A voice distracted her from her thoughts, and she flinched, moving a bit too fast. Her elbow hooked the water bottle, not quite toppling it but jerking the blanket underneath it enough for a sizable puddle of water to escape and seep into the fabric. Cel sighed exasperatedly, moving to pull her notebook out of the way before remembering that it was waterproof, then thought better and rescued her pencil pouch instead. Wait, no, that was waterproof too. Whatever.

Grumbling in her head started almost instantaneously. She raised her gaze to his, glaring, she supposed it could be called: a relatively built character, with dark skin and hair tied into braids, likely a first year. The look was quickly broken, due to her strong dislike of peoples' eyes, but not before a committed aura of death-staring had been communicated. This boy better have some good excuse for making her knock over her water bottle, and god help her if he was here to chastise her for making something. That was how annoyed she was at the people who did that—an atheist who would call on god to make them go away.

At least he was polite. Unfortunately, she was not so. "Sorry for the wrong deed, Mr...?" she trailed off, not quite waiting for him to fill in before continuing. "As much as I'd love to be building something, this place lacks the parts necessary to make what I want, and I'm too lazy to go buy them. I'm taking apart a lock cylinder. If you're interested in the process, we can talk, and if you're about to tell me I should leave off messing with Muggle things, kindly move along."

Isaiah slipped his legs into a more comfortable position as he waited for the girl’s reply, crossing his legs like he used to do in primary school. The grass underneath tickled his thighs, and he loosened his robe considerably, so to get rid of unnecessary warmth.
As Isaiah examined the girl’s workbench, he noted that she had started to draw into a blue-coloured notebook. He peered closer to get a better look – maybe they would tell him what the she was building; and was dumbfounded by what he saw. Intricately detailed drawings, with shading that perfectly captured each of the pieces’ shape. She wrote with a quick hand, and, Isaiah noted, with a pencil, instead of the usual quill.

Isaiah drew as well, when it came to metalwork; and preferred pencil over quill, as the second isn’t easily corrected if a mistake was made. But his drawings were not like hers at all, even the slightest. They were broad strokes, make with a thick pencil, often 2D, with barely any shading. He would have numbers and sentences scribbled on the side, notes and calculations, and random drawings on the side, when his imagination took over his concentration. While this girl drew everything perfectly on the first go, Isaiah had to draw it multiple times.

His attention was turned away from the drawings when Isaiah heard the girl sigh. He saw that a puddle of water had been made on the blanket; and his heart spiked in panic. Was he, somehow, the cause of the situation? Guiltily, Isaiah dropped his eyes, not wanting to be told off. But it was too late. The girl glared at him for a bit, confirming Isaiah’s fears, but dropped her gaze soon after.
"Sorry for the wrong deed, Mr..." Isaiah could hear the question in the sentence, and opened his mouth to answer, but the girl didn’t seem to want on. She left only a moment before continuing on. "As much as I'd love to be building something, this place lacks the parts necessary to make what I want, and I'm too lazy to go buy them. I'm taking apart a lock cylinder. If you're interested in the process, we can talk, and if you're about to tell me I should leave off messing with Muggle things, kindly move along."

Isaiah began fiddling with the grass after the girl had spoken, unsure what to do, and slightly embarrassed. Unconsciously, he started to actually rip the grass out of the ground, until he realised what he was doing, and stopped hastily. The last thing he wanted was another glare.
“Sorry,” he told the girl. “I wasn’t gonna tell you, though. That you shouldn’t do this. I don’t think it’s stupid or anything, I don’t.”
For some reason, unknown to Isaiah, the Gryffindor didn’t mention his love for the activity. Maybe because of the girl’s strong personality, or his fear of getting told off again. Well, whatever it was, as Isaiah was going to say the words, already thought out and formed in his head, something held his tongue.

Isaiah bit his lip as his thoughts directed away from his fears to his pocket. It was a special pocket; which Isaiah had made himself after receiving the school robes. Getting some sort of strong, magical material (the name of which was long forgotten), Isaiah had sewn on an extra pocket, twice as large as the other ones, but still black, to avoid questions from both students and teachers alike. Inside the pocket was a variety of things, bolts and nuts, even a red screwdriver, and lots of scrap metal pieces of varying shapes and types. It was both a leftover pocket and a just-in-case pocket, there if he ever needed a spare part, or somewhere to put a newly-found piece.
Isaiah thought for a while as to whether he should show the girl the contents of the pocket. The piece she needed was probably in there, but would she snap at him again? Taking a chance (yet again), Isaiah dug his left hand into the pocket, grabbing a handful of pieces, and then drawing his hand back out. Then, spreading his palm out wide, he showed the girl his pieces, like a weird magician.

“What piece are you missing? I have some in my pocket, if you want them,” he told the girl eagerly, enthusiastic to make up for his past mistake. “They’re spare pieces I collect.”

Sermo est imago animi.

Not looking up as she noticed the boy shifting on the grass, Cel reached out a hand to brush her pieces to one side and inched herself right, a silent invitation to sit on the blanket. There was plenty of space to be spared, even with her pieces scattered everywhere; if the workspace was small, she'd simply spread the parts out more densely. As long as she could see everything, as long as nothing was stacked in a tower or hidden away in drawers, she'd be fine. Of course, her disorganized nature might not be called 'fine' by everyone, specifically some of her dormmates, but they'd worked out a compromise a long time ago: keep her crap inside of her desk nook, and nobody would ever have to look at the mess inside of it. Even the House Elves had been instructed not to try to organize the mess unless asked to.

At this point it was enough to give someone a headache.

Truth to be told, working with someone staring at you wasn't the most comfortable. It was as if she needed to look a little more skilled, put on a better show, than the spectacle already was. She always preferred to be alone when she worked on something that didn't require partnership, especially things that many disapproved of—there was always some little seed of embarrassment that arose in her, despite there being little to be embarrassed about. Strange how she didn't consciously care what the others thought of her hobbies, the stranger the better, though subliminally the voice remained. Maybe that wasn't the best philosophy to have, but mindsets were hard to change, and logic even harder.

Blowing a lock of hair out of her view, the young girl dropped the screwdriver and lowered the cylinder a few inches from her face as the black-haired boy spoke. Her gaze didn't quite raise itself to eye level, rather stared over his shoulder in an impression of paying attention. There was quite an interesting plant growing on the wall behind him, true, and maybe she was looking at it more than she was listening to his words, but she was focusing enough to register his response, so who cared where her mind wandered in those few seconds?

All right, so maybe he wasn't one of the annoying jerks that had come up to her before. She wasn't even really mad at him before, just had decided to snap a little because she was tired of such people, but now he'd caught her interest—eager enough to not be regarded mistakenly, interested enough not to leave at the hint of an offense. He didn't seem to be the shyest or most skittish person, then; willing to start the conversation at least. Either that or he was just interested enough to bypass that. Possibly both, she raised as vague abstraction of something similar to guilt invaded her mind. "Good," she replied to his correction rather curtly. Was that too sharp?

Taking the opportunity to shake out her hands for a couple of seconds, Cel tilted her head to one side as she noticed his hand move toward the robes he wore, tangled locks of pitch black hair cascading off of her shoulders. She really needed to get into the habit of tying it back, especially with her stepmother always nagging her to take better care of it, but the freedom of having it down at school was priceless. Her hand moved up to tuck a stray piece behind her ear, but froze as the strange boy brought out a couple of pieces of scrap and bolts.

Definitely catching her interest now. Yes, this was the kind of person that she would like to converse with more—she had a feeling that this was an actual interesting person. What a rare speculation! "Huh," she acknowledged, words nonchalant, but there was a definite glint in her eyes that clearly displayed her curiosity. A faint smile slowly curved over her face, barely more than the neutral expression she had worn before, and she raised a graceful hand, offering a handshake, before giving him a proper reply. "Celynne Gray, Ravenclaw. Nice to meet you."

Normally she absolutely hated giving handshakes or needing to introduce herself—actually, even now, she didn't particularly enjoy the act. But for those who knew her well, admittedly not that many people, the previous statement that she hadn't supplied him with an actual response, would have been false. Offering an identification and a formality was an answer in itself—she was willing to continue the conversation, the action transmitted. That didn't mean she was going to leave him hanging, though.

"You see," she began, tossing her screwdriver from one hand to the other, "by I don't have enough parts, I don't mean that I'm missing just a couple of parts. I mean that I don't have the proper materials to mess with in this blasted, old-fashioned society to even know where to start." The screwdriver was dropped to the ground again, and she plucked a piece of scrap metal from his palm, lifting it to eye level to study. "For instance, I can't really do much with a tiny rectangle of steel and a couple of screws. Give me a laser cutter and some wood; well, then I can show you more."

“Huh,” said the Second Year, after Isaiah had shown her the contents of his pocket, and although there was no interest in her voice, it was visible in her eyes, and a small smile grew. "Celynne Gray, Ravenclaw. Nice to meet you," she said, and offered her hand in an elegant manner.

Isaiah took the hand eagerly, his rough, dark hands meeting Celynne’s pale ones. Celynne was a dignified and delicate name, something he could imagine a flower being called. It sounded like upper-case, and Isaiah wondered if Celynne was from a wealthy family. The way she behaved indicated it, the elegant handshake, and she spoke in a proper way.
He was slightly intimidated by this. Although Isaiah had grown up in a poor household, his life had never been horrible. But Isaiah had always shied away from letting friends into his house, ashamed of what lay inside, and would stay outdoors. His clothes were all second hand, mostly from his elder brother, Ejaz, and were never envied. So, as a result, wealthy people had, well, not frightened him, but intimidated him. But Isaiah tried to push this away as he spoke to Celynne.
“Isaiah,” he replied. “Nice to meet you too.”

“You see, by I don’t have enough parts, I don’t mean that I’m missing just a couple of parts. I mean that I don't have the proper materials to mess with in this blasted, old-fashioned society to even know where to start,” said Celynne, while skilfully throwing a screwdriver from one hand to the other. Then, she lifted one of the steel pieces to eye levels and examined it.
"For instance, I can't really do much with a tiny rectangle of steel and a couple of screws. Give me a laser cutter and some wood; well, then I can show you more."

Isaiah, slightly disheartened by the rejection, closed his outstretched hand and carefully tipped the contents back into his extra pocket. By now, he had figured that the two of them were interested in two very different types of mechanics. Isaiah was more old-school, the type of things you’d find in the streets of the early 1900’s. Cogs and gears that clicked together, grating along each other, moving in sync, that type of thing. Old-fashioned clocks, compasses and wind-up toys littered his desk. The Ravenclaw, however, was more practical. Modern mechanics, he was guessing, by the drawings, the lock cylinder, and the speech she had just made. With smaller, finer parts.

“I guess I use different stuff than you,” he said, shrugging it off, both literally and figuratively. “I don’t use laser cutters, but I use wood sometimes. Most of the time it’s metal, though,” he said, gesturing to his pocket, where the scrap pieces lay. “Screws and gears.”
He grinned, slightly self-conscious, and started to play with a sharp, copper piece in his hand.
“Kinda old fashioned, I know,” he said, as if admitting it. Then, his eyebrows furrowed. It wasn’t like Isaiah to be conscious, but in front of Celynne, who was both well-spoken and a Ravenclaw, which, although Isaiah tried to avoid house stereotypes, both inferred that she was intelligent, had considerably lowered his ego.
“But,” he said, as if redoing the sentence, “It’s pretty cool. The gears – they move in sync, and sometimes, if you work on it long enough, you can get them to move like they do in real life. Same movements, I mean.”
He lapsed into silence, unsure what to add.

“What do you normally do?” he asked the girl, shifting his position in the dirt. “I’ve never looked that much into lock cylinders. There are springs, right? With different lengths. And then, when the right key is put inside, the springs line up and…” he trailed off again. “I don’t know what happens after that,” he admitted. “Do you?”

Dictum factum.

Pureblood etiquette training sucked. Sucked as in she'd rather be doing anything else than be instructed on how to properly hold a teacup or get yelled at for not sitting like a lady, but Svana was insistent, and by insistent she meant really freaking scary. Regardless of whether or not she liked it, Cel had taken on the skills fast, even though she still had to loosen her climber's grip in a handshake to avoid crushing someone's hand and force her gaze to meet someone's eyes for a mere moment as she did so.

Isaiah— an interesting name, maybe slightly uncommon but not rare. Hebrew, historically. He seemed much more talkative than the Ravenclaws that she tended to hang around all day, more ready to inquire—that made him an interesting person, and that made her curious. Perhaps being shoved outside for a change wasn't quite so bad of a thing, after all. Or maybe she just got lucky and being outside still sucked a lot.

Now feeling a little guilty, Cel watched as the extended hand folded back into its pocket—a notable pocket too; while he wore school robes, she didn't imagine that there was a pocket such like that on her own uniform, or on anyone else's that she'd seen. Either it was a different robe or he'd altered it himself. Judging from the lack of matching fabric, likely the latter. "I wouldn't say so different," the girl countered. Yes, she'd rather have power tools at hand to make large scale things, but there were smaller parts that she messed around with even more often. "I'd put it as... a wider spectrum. I use wood and modern equipment, but I do what you're interested in, too—a little bit of everything, you know. But I can't make the right gears click if they don't match."

She had to agree, though—gears were pretty cool. Very cool, actually. Some of the most interesting mechanical functions that existed, along with cams and cranks. The intrigue wasn't limited to only what most people thought of as gears, either: there were bevel gears, crown gears, worm drives, gear racks and so much more that people didn't recognize. Unfortunately, most of the wonder of gears was dispelled in the form of boring gear ratio calculation that nobody wanted to do.

For a moment she eyed him, the copper piece glinting in the sunlight despite the shade covering them, and then she reached up to her neck and pulled the larger of the two lockets she wore over her head, careful not to let the thin chain catch and break in her hair. "Let me show you something." It took a few tries to get the pendant open, uncut nails getting in the way, but the front flicked open to reveal the steampunk labyrinth inside, whirring and clicking in miniature. A geneva mechanism chattered there, a cam swiveled here—really, the pieces were small enough that some parts you had to squint to see.

The locket had been a parting gift from Parker. Visiting on weekends was clearly very different from the four years spent as practical father and daughter, and although she still lived at Oxford whenever possible, he'd felt it right to give her something of her old home—an enchanted locket, whizzing around for eternity, running on magic. Each time she saw a new mechanism that she wanted to replicate, it appeared inside, spinning around with the others. By now the round space had been cluttered with gears and pulleys enough that she could barely discern most of the mechanisms, but no matter; it was still a good reminder of her dorm in Oxford.

Flipping the locket shut again as she pulled it back over her head and extracted her hair from the chain loop, the girl reached for the still intact cylinder lying somewhere behind her. This one would be better called a practice lock, actually, instead of an opaque lock cylinder like the other one currently half dissected to her left—it was transparent, clearly showing the pins and springs inside, one of the many practice locks that she'd practiced lockpicking on when she was much younger. "See these pins here?" she began, pointing at the gold pins attached to springs as she drew a pair of bobby pins from her pocket, bending them into configuration.

"Right now they're stuck in the barrel, this gold part, so it can't really turn." Her speech had morphed out of her formal, professional tone and began transitioning into the casual, common American accent that she normally spoke with. "Now—the springs kinda exist so the pins don't just fall out by themselves, because that wouldn't be a very good lock. They have to be pushed. That's where the key comes in." Cel slipped the two bobby pins into the keyhole, levering the one on top to push the pin upward. "I'm just using hairpins, but normally a key would have the edges carved at the right heights, because each pin has to be pushed a different amount. Once they're high enough they'll give a little click—" she demonstrated—"and if I keep this thing turned as far as I can, the pressure will hold the pin in place. Once all the pins are done..." Click, click, clickclickclick. "...then the lock opens."

Vivere est cogitare.

Cel raised an eyebrow at the long-toothed gear Isaiah brought out, reaching out as if to touch it, but not quite making contact before her hand darted away. "The angled ones are called bevel gears," she supplied, hopefully helpfully. "I guess I just like using gears that mesh more perfectly. Smaller ones have to be more precise most of the time, and I'm like fifty times better at precision work than I am at large-scale stuff." Her guise of a British accent and layers of Pureblood training piled atop had been peeled away completely now, distinguished American coming through completely now.

In truth, she often disapproved of using gears that didn't fit together just right. The strain you could put on the mechanism wasn't worth it, and whatever it was would never last for very long. His method of filing down a standard gear worked, but it also took forever and, as he stated, would use long-toothed gears that minimized the torque that she wanted. However, she couldn't judge—she was subject to the same fault. If something different fit, then jam it in somehow and hope it will. MAKE IT WORK.

...Yeah, maybe that was something she should change.

Back to the locks, though. Cel set the practice lock down and slipped the pins into her pocket again before speaking. "Sure, there are a ton of different kinds of locks. Padlocks, for example, work with a dial, though the concept is pretty much the same. Dead bolts and mortise locks also work differently. But most standard locks work like the one I showed you, which is called a pin-and-tumbler lock." She lifted the practice lock cylinder as she spoke, waving it in the air a bit before putting it back down. "Or, you know, since we live in a society with people who literally bypass the laws of physics on a daily basis, you could just unlock the crap with magic."

"But yeah, it's pretty simple once you take a look at it. That's how I figure out how stuff works usually, anyway. Picking a lock fast takes practice, and there are safety locks you can't pick nowadays, but it's pretty easy to get the hang of. Want me to teach you?" the young Ravenclaw offered, sliding a new pair of pins out of her pocket. Was this a step too far, or was it all right? She would get her answer soon, whether she ended up liking it or not. Hopefully the prior, but if it was the latter, no worries. She had an escape plan.