A Stranger's Voice

After Percy and Anna had helped Cassie sing in front of them, Cassie was a little mote confident. But not enough to actually sing in front of people. The best she could do was hum awkwardly to a random song. That's why she was in this unused classroom, where no one was around to listen. She was perfectly fine with singing in front of Percy or Anna, they were her best friends. She would sing for hours for Percy if she asked cause they were so close.

She made sure no one was around to her before she began belting out a catchy pop song. The song was about expressing yourself and being who you are. Which she had trouble with. She was too shy to talk to anyone really and only really talked to Percy.

She was getting into the song so much that she ignored everything around her. Once that song was over, she began another and another. She was enjoying herself and was happy to be free.

Charon was wandering the school, pretty lost. He heard someone's voice and decided to follow it. He walked down the hall deeper and deeper the voice getting louder until he realized it was someone with a good voice, singing. He followed all the way to an empty classroom where he listened for a bit before feeling like he was eavesdropping as the girl was alone while she sung, but he did have to figure out how to get back to his house, and she was right there, so he made a coughing sound to get her attention hoping she wouldn't be mad.

When Cassandra was aware of someone there, she began to freak out. Her face turned a bright red, she was so embarrassed. How long had he been standing there? Had he been there long? Was he there to judge her? She could feel her lunch coming up, but she forced it down. "Oh!" She hurried to grab her belongings but tripped and fell. Could it get any worse? And it did. The necklace she always wore that her father gave her suddenly broke and pearls went everywhere. She hurried to grab them. She didn't care that the boy was there anymore, she needed to collect all of those pearls before they were lost forever.

Charon felt horrible and quickly scrambled picking up all the pearls with her. "I-I'm so sorry. I was lost and I saw you were in here." He looked down, he hated making people feel uncomfortable, especially since this girl was older than him he had a feeling he'd get a little taunting, but when he saw her reaction he decided helping her was better than saving his own skin and booking it. He smiled a bit as he handed her the pearls. "You have a really really good voice." He said kindly. "Do you sing a lot? Or were you down here so you could try for the first time?" H asked curiously.

Cassandra thanked him for helping with the pearls, it had been very nice of him. "Its fine...I just get nervous and scared easily. You just caught me off guard." She started to put the necklace back together as best as she could. She felt terrible about it, it was one of the last things her father had given her before he had passed and it meant a lot to her. She was also glad that the other necklace she wore, didn't break, it meant a great deal to her also.

Cassandra didn't want to answer the boy's question about her singing. She was already too embarrassed and didn't want to have to explain her stage fright. He was sure to make fun of her for it. "You said you got lost?" He was a long way from any person besides herself if he was looking for classroom or people. "Where are you going?" If she avoided his question, maybe he'd forget about it.

He smiled sheepishly. "I uh, was trying to find the common room for Cersier and got pretty lost. I'm not very in tune with my navigation ability. I figured I'd just wander around until I found someone who either was able to direct me or I found it on my own. Hopefully you can direct me. This is only my first week here, and I'm already messing up." He mumbled, he was really embarrassed to say the least. He was typically a smart boy, but he hadn't memorized the school's layout yet, it was so big after all. He hoped he wasn't burdening her.

Cassandra had gotten lost a lot when she was new and she hoped she would be able to help. She had been all by herself before Percy helped her out. "I'm in that house too and I'd be happy to show you the way to the common room." Maybe this was her chance to actually make a friend that was in her house. Well, to actually make friends. She only had two friends. "Oh, I'm Cassandra." She hoped she wasn't making things awkward. She just wanted to go back to singing and forget about how she had embarrassed herself and broke her necklace.

Charon smiled at her. "It's nice to meet you Cassandra, I'm Charon." He said with a smile. He watched her, she seemed just as nervous as he did and decided to strike up a friendship with her. "Well you lead the way." He said cheerily. "You know, you're the first older kid to be genuinely nice to me besides the kids at tryouts." Charon's mind wandered back to Louise, she was so good at the tryout the other day, and they had a ton of fun at the lake together, and pretty...he told his brain to shut up and that he was just friends with Louise and then refocused on Cassandra. "So how do you get the hang of this place?"

Cassandra noticed that he had a far away look in his eyes for a moment, like he was thinking about something or someone. She wondered what had his attention, probably something about the school. "Whatcha thinking about?" He didn't have to answer her question, she didn't mean to pry or anything. "You don't have to answer that." Cassandra was always nice to people besides the one time she had went off on Christian. "I'm nice to everyone really. Percy said it was a trait to have." She smiled at the thought of her friend Percy. "Well, you kinda get used to the place after a while."

Charon's cheeks turned a little pink. "I was thinking about a friend of mine is all." He shrugged, and commanded himself to stop blushing over a friend that's what she was a friend. Still though..he shook his head, banishing the thoughts to the back of his mind. He stretched and yawned. "Potions is such a long class. It's like glorified chemistry. A little of this a little of that and boom." He described, making a little explosion motion with his hands.

Cassandra noticed the blush that played on his face, a friend. Really? Maybe a friend he had a crush on. She herself was guilty of having a crush on her friend, her best friend. So, if this boy did have a crush on his friend, she could relate and maybe they could talk to each other about it. "If that person is just a friend, then why are you blushing?" She figured they were being friendly enough to tell each other these things, even they had just met. Besides, they wouldn't know who the other person was referring to. She could even use a fake name if she wanted to.

She thought back to her first day in potions and how she had been so scared. But that was in the past and she could brew a potion without a second thought. "I was scared at first," she admitted. "I mean, what if I messed up and created a huge explosion?"

""To be a hundred percent honest, I don't know. I mean I shouldn't like her more than friends, but, it feels so good to be around her. It's probably just because her and I just became friends the other day." Yea, that was it, yea, sure. "I almost made a huge explosion, I almost added an extra filly worm to my potion. I would've been in so much trouble, it would've totally sucked. My dad's best class was potions, I'm more of a charms person. It's so much fun." He said, smiling. "I want to learn potions too of course, but it doesn't interest me as much."

Cassandra knew exactly how he felt, she too liked her friend and felt kind of wrong about it. After all, her friend was a girl and Cassie was aa girl. Wasn't that wrong? But when they were together, it felt right and she felt sparks. "Well, I like my friend too.." She kept it simple, she wasn't sure if she wanted to tell him that she liked a girl. Besides, she could be wrong about her feelings. She was thirteen after all.

"Percy told me to be adventurous and do whatever I wanted. But I stuck to the book. Luckily, nothing exploded." She giggled at the memory. "But Percy and I smelled for a couple of days when she made a potion."

"What's her name?" Charon asked quietly. He could hear the apprehension of her admission in Cassandra's voice and rolled with it. He hoped she was okay with his observation. She had seemed really shy, but it wasn't like Charon cared about her sexuality, it made her no different than any other person in his mind. "You talk about this Percy girl a lot. Do you like this Percy girl?" He asked looking at Cassandra. "Does she mean a lot to you? It's okay if you don't feel comfortable telling me, I just notice things sometimes, things Mum taught me, she's a muggle doctor, a therapist. She taught me to look for things, like pitch changes. Your voice got apprehensive when you mentioned that you liked your friend, but excited when you mentioned Percy."

Cassandra hadn't anticipated him figuring out that she liked Percy. "Um.." All she wanted to do was change the subject away from her and not talk about her crush on Percy. It was a tough subject to talk about and she didn't want to talk about her feelings. "You said your mother was a therapist?" She hoped the subject would change, at least away from her. But it was most likely going to come it back to her. She pretended to concentrate on the pearls she was trying to put back on the string, she cursed under breath at the difficulty of the action.