Clean Away the Past

Harley had discovered the Secret Common Room after she had tripped while practice wrist movements with her wand and tapped the pegasus statue. She had never thought much about the statue; it just stood there unmoving. Apparently though, if you tapped the statue with your wand, it opened to show an entirely new room. Harley called this place her Sanctuary. It was quiet, isolated, the perfect place to study, and always warm, but it was also always dirty and dusty. Exams were over, so she decided that there was nothing better to do than clean her Sanctuary via magic. After all, what was the point in learning magic unless you could do something with it?

Just as Harley waved her wand and muttered the first syllable of a sweeping spell, the familiar sound of stone scraping against concrete echoed in the room. Her head snapped towards the sound to figure out who else was in her Sanctuary now. When she saw a familiar face, her eyebrows furrowed. "Philip? What're you doing down here?"

As most of his exploring starts out, Philip had gotten bored and decided to get out of his dorm room. Plus, exams were over and that meant Charlie was getting caught up on all her sleep that she had missed. He was just wandering about the indoor garden when he stumbled upon the Secret Common Room. Funny how it only took six years to actually find it.

He blinked when the stone turned and looked up to see Harley. “Oh, hey, Fenwick.” He nodded at her. “Well, I was just minding my business and yeah, here I am.” Philip chuckled. “How are you?”

She looked startled for a moment before shaking herself out of her stupor. "Um, cleaning, I guess." Harley motioned to her wand before laughing a little. "Cleaning's always been cathartic to me. I dunno. Maybe it's just the thought of fixing things and making them nicer." She stopped herself before she could continue. "Why am I telling you that? Wow, I swear I'm not like an uber deep person. You wanna join?" Since there would be two people, using magic would make things go a lot faster, and she enjoyed taking a long time cleaning, so she put her wand away.

Instead she turned her wand into a duster so she could clean off all the books. "Well, I guess you can start wiping down the shelfs. I brought a couple rags in my bag over on the chair." When she glanced over at Philip, he seemed significantly less... joyful than normal. "Hey, you okay? You're looking a little worse for wear."

Philip raised an eyebrow at her and then nodded, chuckling softly. “I feel the same way about organizing.” He admitted. “I like everything to be pretty orderly. Drives Charlie nuts most of the time because I’m generally organizing her things.” Philip nodded. “Yeah, I’ll help you out.”

He went over and grabbed one of the rags, heading over to the shelves. Philip quietly began to dust the shelves. He was pretty quiet lately, which was understandable with what had happened. Harley’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. “What? Oh, uh… define okay?” Philip tried to crack a joke, a terrible one, but a joke nonetheless. "I, uh, I've been better."

Harley set her wand-duster down for a moment to turn and face Philip. "Okay? Okay is when everything in your life is in order. It can also be something someone says when they'e most definitely not okay." She knew enough about 'okay'. After all, when she was abandoned by her parents, she must've said 'I'm okay' about twenty million times. "Trust me when I say for a long time I was the latter, so come on. What's eating you up?"

It wasn't easy to miss Charlie hanging around Philip more (at least, more often than usual), and she knew what that was. When something traumatic happens to a person, they find someone or something and stick to them because for a while, they're the only thing holding them together. She called it 'comfort blanketing', which was so dumb but it worked.

Philip held the rag tightly in his hand as she explained the definition of okay. He sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah… I’m definitely not okay then.” He stayed quiet after that for a little bit. Harley and Philip hadn’t been that close, though in the past year they had become closer. Plus, Harley was one of Charlie’s best friends. He could open up to her.

“There, uh, there was something bad that happened in my family a little bit ago… and because of it I have a huge responsibility on my shoulders.” Philip said softly. Charlie had been his rock and he was so lucky to have her to lean on.