Friends Who Judge Together PV M. T'ien reop

If there was one thing Mars never understood, it was 11-year-olds falling in love. Maybe it was in their nature, to take love seriously. They had relied solely on their relationship with their brothers to keep them afloat. But also—who in their right mind would fall in love while not hormonally stable? It made no sense.

They had wandered into the Courtyard yet again, after a full-day of wasting away behind a table full of homework. At least they were done. The sun was out and the trees in the Courtyard swayed easily in the light breeze. It was nice, refreshing, just the right thing after spending several hours in the sweltering heat of the Ravenclaw Common Room. However, the ambiance of the whole scene was disrupted by a very loud couple of first years.

The two of them were yelling back and forth in the middle of the Courtyard. The boy was screaming something about another Ravenclaw in Charms and the girl was sobbing, claiming he'd never loved her. Mars sighed. Well, that much was probably true.

Crossing their arms, Mars stepped into the Courtyard, scooting around the couple. They rolled their eyes. If they wanted to have a messy breakup, sure, that was something Mars could appreciate. Everyone needed a little drama in life now and again. But did they really have to do it out here? There was some laundry that simply didn't need to be aired. Not to mention they'd attracted a fair amount of onlookers, all of which who were glaring with annoyance or hiding their laughter. It was quite amusing, the girl in her pigtails and the boy so short, he looked like a seven-year-old. Two little babies arguing about love.

Mars let out another sigh. Just get over yourselves already. They hadn't noticed they'd managed to turn midstep, stalling near a bench to watch the scene unfold. Well, it was entertainment at any rate.

They heard a sigh from beside them. Turning, they saw a Gryffindor girl—a second-year, brown hair and fiery eyes—sitting on the bench with a book open in her lap. She shook her head. Mars followed her eye line—she was watching the first-years argue with an incredulous look on her face. Mars felt an immediate pull to just say something.

"They're really," they titled their head in the direction of the couple, arms still crossed, "something, huh?"

Ana's disdainful stare continued as the scene escalated into the girl throwing something at the boy, a necklace maybe and the boy collapsing to his knees and clutching her legs as though to stop her from leaving. What a complete mess...

An unfamiliar voice spoke and Ana glanced in the speaker's direction. It wasn't someone she recognized as anything beyond maybe a first year. That wasn't even a little surprising, seeing as Ana had been gone more than half of the year, and had been pretty intently focused on her studies in the time that she had been at school. Whoever it was had absolutely lovely hair. Ana knew she could never pull off hair that short, but it looked almost magically awesome on the stranger. The shade was what had made her notice though. It was so red Ana doubted it was nature, and yet it somehow looked perfect on this student.

Their good taste in hair style combined with the fact that they also seemed to be utterly disgusted with the mess unfolding before them highly recommended them to Ana, and so she met their eyes and replied. "Oh, I have no idea what you're talking about, they're so spectacularly classy and composed," Ana said dryly before chuckling ironically. It was so bad. They were now both on the ground, and Ana thought that the boy had probably managed to knock over the girl with his leg hugging antics. One of them was bleeding now, although she couldn't tell which. Good Lord, just make it stop. It just kept getting worse and worse. She half expected the girl to start screaming about being pregnant or something, since she didn't see anything else they could really do to make this any more tasteless and tacky. She couldn't watch this any longer, and so she turned back her companion.

Extending her hand, she smiled slightly at the redhead. "I'm Anastasia, by the way," she said. She figured that if they were going to judge people together, then they really ought to be acquainted. Not to mention, their hair was quite possibly the coolest thing Ana had seen and she'd seen quite the range of hairstyles at Hogwarts.

@Anastasia Beckett
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Ah. Mars couldn't help but let out the barest hint of a shit-eating grin at the girl's words. Sarcasm, dry and dripping, at its finest. The scene had somehow escalated by now, objects flying at one another and it seemed that a couple of splotches of blood littered the ground. They almost let out a visible wince; who was heartbroken enough to quite literally injury their ex. At this age.

From their peripheral, the Ravenclaw caught the girl turning to them. They swiveled to match, arms unfolding from their chest. Anastasia, hmm? It almost rang a bell. Mars brought a hand to shake hers, trying to block out the hysterical screams coming from the other side of the Courtyard.

"Mars T'ien, like the planet. Or the war god, I suppose. I use they/them pronouns," they grinned at her. Something about this Gryffindor lit a mischievous flame behind their eyes. From the first word, she emanated this aura, a presence that was too undeniable to ignore. The perfect embodiment of a lioness, if they had to pick.

"Do you go by Anastasia normally?"

The growing wails from the couple escalated, forcing Mars' attention back onto the pair. They watched through bored eyes as the insults continued to fly.

"You'd think they'd be bored of this by now, no?" they drawled, cocking their head to the side. Honestly, who had the energy to scream at someone for this long. If it was them, they probably would have smiled, shrugged, and gone up to take a nap. Magic existed for gods' sake, and they wanted to make a fuss about this?

Mars couldn't help a sigh. Sliding their eyes back to Anastasia, they blew out a half chuckle.

"You think we stop them?"

@Mars T'ien

A skeptical eyebrow went up as blood was drawn. While Ana considered herself a bit of a hopeless romantic and was well aware that she was something of a drama queen, she couldn't imagine putting herself in the situation these morons had put themselves in. Dating as a first-year was ill-advised in her opinion. In addition to the fact it was just incredibly tacky and absolutely nobody was mature enough at 11 to be in any kind of relationship, they were going to be stuck with these people for the next six years. If someone were in a relationship that went badly as a sixth or seventh year, they would be able to avoid their ex for a few months and then move on. The same couldn't be said for the first years.

Ana liked to think she was a fairly good judge of people. Generally, within the first few moments of meeting someone, she could tell whether or not the person was a friend, foe, or someone to mock. This seemed to be a potential friend or at least an ally. Not to mention, between their name and hair, they were in the top ten coolest people Ana had ever met.

"Generally that or Ana," the Gryffindor replies. More shrieks caused Ana to glance back over at the brawling couple. How were they both so bad at fighting? Ana was a spoiled, rather prim and posh type, and even she would have been able to do better than they were. It had gone from somewhat amusing to just being utterly pathetic. "It would be almost impressive if it wasn't such a shitshow."

Ana chuckled at the wix's suggestion. They more than likely could, seeing as both Mars and Ana were taller than both members of the rolling flailing mess, and in any event, Ana could easily Flipendo them apart. "We probably should," Ana said, not sounding particularly convinced.

Hmm, Ana then. Mars committed the name to memory, some part of them knowing it would come in handy in the future. From the looks of her, this was a good witch to get on their side. She had this aura about her, different from anyone else they'd met before now, and dozens of times more exciting.

They hummed at her comment. "Honestly, they wouldn't be terrible drama actors," they snickered, "Just get 'em some giant dresses and powdered wigs and you could probably have a full-blown production."

There was blood flying now, and yet somehow, the two of them still managed to look utterly childish, pointless, and all-around distasteful. This was the problem with dating so young, they figured. Neither of you had the brains to figure out how to properly manage a relationship.

Mars smiled at the half-assed tone of that sentence. They could understand—it was almost boring, really, watching the two tiny First Years fight. It seemed like hassle to break them up at this point, like a huge waste of time. They hoped no professors would come over here. They had much better things to do than break up with warring couple.

Still, Mars could tell that a few of the bystanders were getting antsy. A few of them rolled their eyes, a few had annoyed grimace on their face, a few were trying to shove their noses so far into their books that they were certain they wouldn't be able to breath. Someone should probably put an end to this.

Sighing, they shifted their weight, pulling their wand out of a back pocket. Flipping it between nimble fingers, they ran through the possible spells. Verdimillious would probably do the trick, Flipendo if they wanted to send a message, Tarantallegra if they wanted to embarrass them even more than they already had. If that was possible. Mars glanced down at Anastasia, appraising look in their eyes. They grinned.

"Wanna do the honors or shall I?"

While judging others wasn't a prerequisite for gaining Ana's good opinion, it certainly helped. Judging others for foolish behavior was one of Ana's few consistent pleasures at school, and sharing her judgments was always enjoyable.

"Oh, that's an excellent point. I've watched operas with less melodrama," Ana laughed. Ana failed to see the point of sullying one's reputation in such a fashion. Even if a relationship had gone badly, brawling in a public place didn't seem like the thing to do.

Her parents were hardly a model of a healthy relationship, but Ana felt perfectly safe in assuming that drawing blood in the middle of a school courtyard was a sign that neither party was remotely prepared for any kind of romantic involvement. Thinking about her parents darkened her generally good mood, so she turned her focus back on the scene before them.

The encounter was increasingly violent and absurd and ceasing to amuse Ana in the slightest. The scene was reminiscent of the time Jasmine had found one of Ana's aunt's pygmy puffs. That hadn't ended well for the pygmy puff. Somehow, this scenario seemed to have two puffs and no cat.

"Oh, by all means," Ana laughed, motioning as though to get out of Mars' way. She rather wondered what spell the Ravenclaw would select. A Flipendo would likely do the trick quite nicely and get right to the point. A sparks charm would also be an interesting selection and show that the caster had a bit more of a sense of flair and drama. The dancing legs charm would also be quite amusing as would the curse of bogies. Ana herself would have likely selected a simple Incendio to the ground next to the pair to get them to separate and if one of them happened to catch on fire, then at least the fight would have stopped. Whatever the spell of choice was would tell Ana quite a bit about her new companion.