Errand Selling Out Open Closed

Interacting with @Buffy Pfalzgraf

When Aaron first heard about the dessert decorating errand, he hadn't exactly been excited. Who would be so cruel as to ask them to decorate desserts but not allow them to eat any?! But it really wasn't a big deal, because he had a whole dorm room full of snacks. Before leaving for the Great Hall, he had grabbed a bottle of Yoohoo from his dorm. The chocolatey drink would hopefully keep him sated while he dealt with all the sweets for the errand.

Aaron walked into the Great Hall with his drink and a great attitude. His main motivation for this errand was the money. Six whole sickles to add to his savings which would go towards a broomstick of his own. One day, he would own a top-of-the-line broom and play for a top-of-the-line Quidditch team, but he would need to save up a lot of money for that particular dream. Being waitlisted for the Hufflepuff Quidditch team was an obstacle he would one day overcome, and in the meantime he wanted to be able to practice more often. Since the school brooms were normally locked up, and Professor Bercegeay wasn't easily swayed to allow extra practice for a non-Quidditch team member, he really needed to get his own broom.

Of course, the house points were a nice bonus, too. Aaron's Hufflepuff pride was through the roof lately, and since his awful homework scores wouldn't help in that department, he tried to find other ways of earning house points.

Aaron looked around the Great Hall. All the tables were covered in desserts. Cupcakes, marzipans, sugar cookies, mini cakes! All of them freshly baked and filling the air with sweet smells. It made his mouth water. Before he could decide where to sit (he didn't see anyone familiar), he heard a girl talking loudly about the weather. He turned to look at her and saw a girl with shockingly-colored hair! He had definitely seen her around before, but he knew she wasn't a Hufflepuff and he had never interacted with her before. With the prospect of making a new friend, Aaron quickly went to join the bright-haired girl. He took a seat across from her as she spoke to a passing house-elf.

"Hey, I'm Aaron!" he introduced with a smile. "You're a first year, too, right? I think I've seen you in classes before." Aaron looked around the table and quickly grabbed the nearest plain cupcake, intending to decorate it like a quaffle. The black-haired wizard looked at the girl's very yellow cupcake and gestured to it with a grin, "I like your cupcake. It's very Hufflepuffy, although I bet that's not what you were going for." He only said that because he knew this girl wasn't a Hufflepuff.

Word Count: 460/1000

Interacting with @Aaron Jones

Of course, for someone who had experienced few hours in her life, an hour seemed interminable. An hour or so of work was daunting. Not daunting like trying to make a professor pull out their hair. Not good daunting. More daunting like walking home from school in the rain.

Buffy channeled some of her frustration into working extra hard. And extra fast. The delicate cupcakes took the abuse like they had to, deforming as she worked on them. Bits of frosting flung about as she forced happiness onto their blank canvases. Her station would likely be in a state by the time she finished. But that's what house elves were for, weren't they?

"Hey, I'm Aaron!" he introduced with a smile. "You're a first year, too, right? I think I've seen you in classes before."

"Yeah, bud. Been here 3 years though. Remedial case." Buffy shrugged and wiped a bit of frosting off her cheek. It was a joke of course, but her body language or expressions didn't betray it. So maybe it was also more of a lie. It had certainly come off like a practiced one. In any case, Buffy didn't consider the difference between lying and joking important here. She just found that untruth amusing, and that was all that was important to her.

The 'Bud' had also betrayed her Welsh background. Outside of America, it was the Welsh who used bud, in not a very different way. But pronounced quite differently, of course.

"I like your cupcake. It's very Hufflepuffy, although I bet that's not what you were going for."

Houses, yes houses. Buffy had noticed many students put a lot of stock into them. She didn't. She would be the same Buffy no matter what house she was in. Certainly her interactions in the dorms would have been very different. Thinking about it, she was confident she would've found ways to amuse herself, even in a house like Hufflepuff. There, personalities her exact opposite were plentiful. Been like putting a fox into a hen house, that. The sorting hat had probably chosen well with Buffy. Saved many people, many headaches.

A small decorating palette taken from another table, with it, Buffy stabbed one of her misshapen creations. Right where the smiley face was. She took it beside her own face and squeezed it. That made the cupcake's mouth move, sort of. As if it spoke.

"What do you mean? Cupcake maker be praised! I'm so happy to be alive! Even for a short while, before I'm chewed up and ended!" Buffy said, using a high pitched cupcake person voice. Yes, Buffy was the cupcake maker. Their god. And she had much work to do yet, breathing life into these tasty sponges. Grant these poor pastries a soul. Maybe one day she would be able to really animate food with a spell. She thought it'd be amusing. Have her food beg for mercy as she ate it, or maybe thank her for the privilege of being eaten?

Words: 836

Interacting with @Buffy Pfalzgraf

Aaron's eyes lit up a bit when he heard her talk directly to him. "Bud" she had called him. And her voice sounded so familiar. Well, not her voice, but her accent. It perfectly matched his own. Almost a little too perfectly. Had he imagined it? Her comment about being a remedial case distracted him from his thoughts.

"Really?" he asked, fascinated by the idea. At first he thought she was joking, but the seriousness of her tone implied otherwise. But... in the end, he had to think she was joking. She didn't look old enough to be thirteen or fourteen! He tried to smile, although the odd bit of humor had thrown him for a loop. Particularly when she suddenly stabbed her cupcake. His smile faltered slightly, but it was soon in full force again as he listened to her high-pitched voice.

"Cardiff!" he suddenly said, his smile even bigger than before. He'd heard plenty of times before how those from Cardiff had their own specific flare on the Welsh accent. Here at Hogwarts, he'd heard almost every kind of accent imaginable thanks to the wide variety of Europeans here. But here he was, being reminded of home, even as this girl disguised her voice for her cupcake person. "Are you from Cardiff, Ms. Cupcake Maker?" he clarified the sudden exclamation a bit sheepishly. Flashes of his little bayside city made him eager to form a connection with this brightly-haired girl. They could even hang out during the Easter break if they lived close enough to each other!

Even through his excitement, though, he continued working diligently on his own little "cupcake person." He had grabbed some red icing and some black icing and worked on the task of mixing the two, trying to get the perfect shade of darker red that would mimic a Quaffle. Although he was slowly realizing it'd be hard to decorate it like a Quaffle.. it might just end up looking like a cupcake with dark red icing.

Word Count: (460 + 334) = 794/1000

It seemed that the brightly-haired girl had lost interest in speaking to him. Aaron shrugged it off as best he could and focused his attention on decorating his cupcakes. He took a long sip of his Yoohoo then got back to work.

It seemed that he had mixed too much black icing into the red, because it had turned completely brown compared to the dark red he had been going for. Slightly frustrated, Aaron changed his whole approach to the decoration. He would go with the brown icing and swirl each of his three cupcakes with the unappetizing color (or maybe people would think its just a nice chocolate icing?). He then looked around at the other decorations available, and his eyes narrowed in on some toothpicks. Idea!

Aaron grabbed the toothpicks and stuck one in each of the cupcakes. He then found some moldable chocolate? Or something that was moldable. A quick sniff revealed that it was definitely edible and smelled like chocolate, but it was red. He rolled a small bit of it in his hand to create a tiny ball. The black-haired wizard stuck the sphere onto the top of a toothpick and nodded to himself. Now it looked like a chocolate cupcake with a red ball on a toothpick. AKA a quaffle. He did the same with some black chocolate and some gold chocolate, to represent a bludger and a snitch. He tried to make wings for the snitch, but they quickly fell off. Oh, well. He wasn't exactly a decorator.

Aaron had chocolate all over his hands, but he didn't really care. With a proud smile, he put his three cupcakes onto a platter and turned to find the nearest house elf to take them away. "Aren't they awesome? It's a snitch, bludger and quaffle. Quidditch, y'know?" he said, beaming at the house elf that approached him. The tiny elf merely nodded as he took the plate away, and Aaron wondered if they even understood human speech. It was his first time interacting with one of them, and it had been so brief.. no matter. Aaron got to his feet, waved goodbye to the brightly-haired girl, and took his leave from the hall.

Word Count: (460 + 334 + 368) = 1162/1000
EXIT THREAD