Armed and Insane

Marcus summoned weed from the bottom of the shallow lake's edge with a finicky kind of disdain for the groggy water. He laid it out on a large, flat rock a few metres away from the shore.

He cast a simple spell to highlight any areas of cellular irregularities, and when the bright pink splodges appeared he cast a magnification spell over them and cancelled out the highlights.

Annabelle skipped along the side of the lake off to explore this part of Hogwarts, she stopped short as she saw a male not to far ahead of her. She cocked her head to the side as she saw him summon something from the water, curious she sneaked over to his side and glanced over him shoulder just in time to see him cast another spell.

Bursting with curiosity she made herself known and asked "Hey, watcha doing?"

Marcus started and fumbled with his wand as a girl's voice suddenly asked a question from behind him. The spell flickered, but he stabilised it before glancing around. It was a girl, yes, but not one he recognised, so he cut the spell and let it hold on it's own power before turning around proper.

"I'm looking at biological deformities in kelp here to see whether I'd be able to run electricity through it," he said, breath returning to a normal rate. "I'm Marcus, by the by. Who are you?"

The Hufflepuff grinned sheepishly to herself as she realized she had startled the other, once he had recovered Annabelle offered him a kind smile before grinning at his response and answering "It's nice to meet you Marcus, I'm Annabelle. Have you figured out if you're able to do it or not?" She asked innocently, idly thinking 'This might be related to Biowave and Biostream energy.'

"Nice to meet you too Annabelle," he said, grinning at her. "And I haven't figured it out yet - I haven't looked yet," he said, his grin quirking upwards into an almost laugh.

He turned and looked closely at it, but the kelp was exactly the same as every other piece of kelp he'd tried from a magical environment - not electric friendly. He pouted. "And that's an ix-nay on the uccess-say," he said with a slight sigh.

Annabelle grinned back at him and nodded before sitting next to the wizard and watched him preform the spell. Trying not to look too fascinated at what he was doing, although it was pretty hard for her, she was always so naturally curios about what she didn't know.

She bit her lip to restrain a giggle when she saw him pout, yet it escaped her lips at his form of speech. She smiled kindly at Marcus "Is this a personal project?" She asked curiosity leaking into her tone.

Marcus grinned. "Is there any other kind when you eliminate school?" he asked flippantly. "Yeah it's a personal one - drives my sister insane," he said.

He paused. "Mind you, it doesn't take a lot to irritate Julie. For all I know it could be the spontaneous pig latin," he said, eyebrows raising thoughtfully. He'd never really considered the cause of his sister's perpetual annoyance at him before.

His mouth twisted into a moue of puzzlement as he looked at the weeds on the rock. "I don't suppose you know anything about biological transmission of electricity?" he asked hopefully.

Annabelle gave Marcus a sheepish grin "I guess not" She replied, before catching his mention of a sister, 'Julie? As in Julie Pulie?' She thought but didn't voice her suspicions, instead grinned at the mention of sibling affection...or at least what she thought was sibling affection.

"Well, I know that the Muggle world have gained some ground in bioWAVE technology" She said, thoughtfully before elaborating a bit more "Basically the Muggle's have made a device which absorbs the ocean wave energy both at the surface and below the waves. Although they're still experimenting I suspect they'll be ready for commercial production soon."

The Hufflepuff explained lightly, a grin on her features once more "Hope that little snippet of information helps you with your project" She said sincerely.

"Huh," Marcus said. "Never really considered that process before - I've more been looking at the history with Galvani and Volta and their concepts of electricity," he said, brows furrowing slightly.

While one part of his mind diverged on a tangent of how that could be used to conduct electricity through plants with a high salt concentration he managed to pull the rest of him back on track. "I think it'll definitely help," he said, smiling at Annabelle. "Thanks for the direction."

"Glad to help, Marcus!" Annabelle grinned back cheerfully "Galvani and Volta aren't necessarily a bad direction to go by either, after all the more knowledge on the subject the better the chances of success are."

Annabelle said while grabbing a chocolate bar from her pocket (which she always kept a cooling charm on, she didn't want her chocolate to melt after all!). Unwrapping the bar she took a huge bite, she had gone too long without chocolate...despite the fact that she had 3 bars this morning, but no one else knew that.

Marcus grinned as Annabelle took a bite out of the chocolate bar. "Galvani and Volta are rather interesting," he said with a nod, bringing a muesli bar out of his own pocket - not as exciting or delicious as many liked chocolate, but he was a weird nut who didn't. "I only got onto it when my sister was raving about a muggle novel she loved though."

He shrugged and leant back against the rock, ignoring the weed for now. "So what brings you down to the lake this morning?"

"I'm going exploring!" She said without any bashfulness, instead a little excitement shone in her eyes as the topic came up "This place is so big, I thought I would get lost for sure! Well I did get lost a couple of times, but that's not the point, point is that this place is the ultimate place to explore, I've got so many places I still need to go see!"

Annabelle, in hr excitement, never noticed when she started rambling, so she continued to ramble on about her excursions throughout the castle until she came to an abrupt stop and blushed, rubbing the back of her neck and grinning sheepishly she said "Sorry...I got a bit excited"