May 13, 1893 - The Annual Potts Flower Show

At eight years old Grace had developed a small independent streak. It was an independence that was tempered by just who Grace was. Which was to say she didn't mind wandering away from her governness or brother these days, but she certainly didn't like to talk to strangers when she did so. In fact Grace was much more willing to take walks on her own, dreaming that she was a grand lady whom all the men wanted to court (which was a dream that if it were to come true when she was older most likely would not be a comfortable situation for her, but as it was she imaged older Grace to be very much like her mother: cool, poised, and not at all nervous of attention). This was precisely what she was doing as she wandered through the paths of the flower show's english garden.

On either side of the paths were brightly colored flowers, reds and yellows, pinks and purples. Grace smiled at how pretty they all looked. And then the first puff of pollen hit her in the face with a spray of bright pink. It surprised her and a small shriek escaped her lips as she jumped backward. But another plant was releasing pollen and soon she was in the middle of a cloud full of streaks of pollen all the colors of the rainbow.

Disoriented Grace waved her arms around her, spinning as she did so. Off balance another small shriek escaped as she tripped and landed on her bum in the middle of the path pollen still blocking her view.

Open to anyone but prefer a child

  

"Don't touch that! "

She felt her hand yanked away from the soft, velvety texture of the petals. Some hook-nosed hag caught her hand inside bony claws, mauling its tender skin. They weren't even fingers anymore, and Charley didn't believe they ever could have been. Someone had hexed the foul bat, and now she was spreading her misery to anyone in her reach! The street urchin twisted her hand, contorting her fingers and squeezing them until they burned, yet nothing could break the old woman's cursed grip. "Lay off, you old b—!"

Her cheek burned sharp and sudden, a thousand times hotter than her hand. Charley cupped it in her free hand, pressing it deep to ease the sting of the old woman's slap. Her eyes could have melted the hag if she were a candle, but whatever hex had granted her claws had made her firm full of sterner stuff. She hissed, spewing rotten breath into the urchin's nose, and Charley had to bite her cheek to keep from gagging on it. "Foul-mouthed boys grow up to be unimpressive men, who disappoint every woman they try to please."

Before Charley could protest she turned, unlocking her hand and strolling off with the grace of a far more majestic bird than the foul bat deserved. Charley stared daggers after the old woman, fuming until other show-goers filed in between them, crowding out her view. The street urchin stuffed hands in her pockets, stalking back the other way through the awed crowd of people. Gawking over a buncha flowers, what a waste of time! Charley didn't even try to lift anything from the people she bumped into, so foul was her mood.

She barely noticed the cloud of pollen until the haze revealed a bump in her path. Squinting down, and rubbing her twitching nose against the itch of the pollen, Charley found the bump to be shaped much more like a little girl than a mound of dirt she could kick aside. Her foot grumbled at its lack of satisfaction. The urchin reclaimed a little bit of it by pointing down at the bum-plopped little girl, and belting out a hearty belly laugh.

"Looks like the flower show just isn't for delicate, little flowers like you!" The street urchin grinned at her own wit, and leaned down closer to the pollen-covered little girl. Charley's palm was open, but her words were spears. "Careful getting up, you might break a petal."

---

Grace Riley

---

  

---

Grace's cheeks burned at the laughter. She wanted to cry as the girl's words came at her in a torent. Only her brother got to tease her. Grace pushed herself off the ground ignoring the proffered hand and resisted wiping at her cheeks and giving away how much she wanted to cry. "I'm not delicate." Well she was, but it didn't seem a compliment from this ruffian and so she automatically contested it.

She tugged at her skirt to straighten it leaving streaks of blue along with the multitude of other colors. And then the girls were surrounded in more puffs of colored pollen as the plants renewed their attack.

The following 1 user Likes Grace Riley's post:1 user Likes Grace Riley's post
   Charley Goode

A snicker escaped from the street urchin's throat, swelling with a greedy giddiness. Riling up the little girl didn't quite soothe the sting in her cheeks, but Charley would take what she could get. Apparently Little Flower didn't think the same way, and stood up all by herself. So be it, Charley didn't really want to help her anyway! Her arms folded themselves across her chest and she reared back up to her full height, watching the little girl with a smirk tugging at her lips.

"Fine, you're a tiger," Charley threw out a mocking claw-fingered hand toward her, cat scratching the air in front of the Little Flower. No, not a Little Flower, a Tiger Lily. The urchin's grin cracked her lips, and she drew in another breath to cackle at the quip.

Something snagged in Charley's throat, making her cough. Another breath drew in more of the cloying, dense cloud that surrounded her and the little girl now, a colorful haze that blotted out the gardens around them. "What the—"

She coughed so hard her lungs ached, drawing in a rasping breath between the pollen stuck to her lips and nose now. They were stuck everywhere else as well, painting the street urchin in brighter colors than the dirt and grime covering her unwashed clothes. She coughed as her lungs burned with the same, singular, command as her mind: less color, more air! Charley couldn't stop to admire the new hues of blue and yellow and purple on her costume, she had to get out of here.

Her feet turned in the direction she thought was safety, relying only on her mind's eye inside the opaque haze of pollen. That wasn't about to stop her! Relying on memory, Charley willed her feet to run, and ran...headlong into the smaller form of Tiger Lily instead. The two went down in a tangle of limbs, sending more plumes of the colored pollen up into the air like a dust cloud.

---

  

---

Grace had once seen a tiger at the Padmore Zoological Gardens. The creature had made her shiver as it had prowled the encasement, its muscles rippling. It had been so fearsome that Grace had almost been unable to look at it. Indeed, she'd poked her face out from behind fingers to glance at it only once or twice before Freddy had pronounced it was time to see the giraffes. Muggle creatures, it turned out, were as perfectly frightening as wizarding animals. Being compared to a Tiger wouldn't have been so bad had the girl not already been mocking her. Perhaps Grace might even have had a retort (she wouldn't have, but one could be wishful) had the pollen not started at that point.

Something was moving toward her in the pollen, it was dark and she swore it looked like just a prowling cat. A puff of orange pollen obscured her view but still she could see the shape racing toward her. Before she knew what was happening she was being knocked over, a scream ripping from her lips as what she thought was a tiger pounced on her. The scream choked off as the pollen went down her lungs and she began to gasp and cough, tears forming in her eyes. She was going to be eaten alive by a tiger and no one would even see it because she was being hidden by plants. It had to be the worst way to die. She was absolutely certain.

The following 1 user Likes Grace Riley's post:1 user Likes Grace Riley's post
   Charley Goode

Getting all tangled up in some other girl's skirts was not how Charley wanted to go out. She would rather her death to be from something like a heroic leap from a rooftop, or perhaps a slide under a portcullis in an old-fashioned castle. Something daring, she figured, that people would remember her fondly by. Not tripped by a little girl and choking on pollen, that would be too embarrassing to die over.

Once that was decided, all that was left for Charley was to get out of it.

Easier said than done. The street urchin kicked her legs, yanking them away from the clinging material of Tiger Lily's skirts. If she would only stop screaming and coughing so much. Charley was finding it hard to concentrate with all the noise in her ears and pollen in her throat. It still clouded her view as well, though if she squinted, the urchin was almost certain she could make out the shimmering clearness of air some feet ahead.

Charley cursed whatever woman that had put girls in skirts. That was too much fabric for anyone, why couldn't they just wear britches like sensible children? Should anyone ask, Charley would gladly tell them how much more sensible boys were than girls, she just needed some air first. Grabbing some purchase on Tiger Lily, Charley dragged the girl along as she crawled. If they weren't going to untangle, then she was bringing the flower girl with.

She coughed and sputtered as, eventually, the urchin managed to crawl into thinner air. Without the cloying, clinging pollen at her lips, Charley drew in a half-gasped drink of real air. Her face touched the floor, open-mouthed like a fish out of water. Just breathing and breathing and breathing. It felt good to breathe.

It felt good to be alive.

---

  

---

Something knocked into her, but despite her horror of a tiger it felt distinctly human. More like the girl who had been teasing her. Somehow her skirts wrapped around them as they both landed hard on the ground again.

And then she was being dragged down the pathway. There was nothing to do for it but crawl in the same direction.

After what felt like forever Grace found herself in pollen free air. She sucked it in, one greedy gasp after another, coughing between to clear the pollen from her body.

Then she glanced at the girl and began to laugh. Every shade of the rainbow ingulfed the girl. Reds and blues and greens and purples and pinks and yellows. And once she started laughing the hysteria kept her laughing. Which made her think of the laughing potion and then she was terrified again and stopped giggling as abruptly as she could, convinced she would die if she kept laughing.

The following 1 user Likes Grace Riley's post:1 user Likes Grace Riley's post
   Charley Goode

"What're you laughing at?"

Charley wiped at her face, rubbing at whatever was coated there. It smeared onto her fingers, coming off in grimy clumps of bright colors. Brilliant, she was nothing more than a walking rainbow of plant vomit right now. Her hands could barely keep still, swiping at the colors and trying to shake it off. The pollen clung as tightly to each other as it did her hand, until she summoned some sort of superhuman grit to send some flying back toward the plants it belonged to.

"Take that!" The street urchin followed her wish with a kick at the flora stands. It seemed to shake back at her, threatening more pollen. Charley made a mean face at it, though she took a few steps back anyway, surveying the awful state of herself. All she'd wanted to do here was look at some pretty flowers. Now, thanks to some old bitty and a giggly Tiger Lily, Charley couldn't even have that!

She turned to Tiger Lily and her color-coated skirts. They were pretty and full of a dazzling array of hues, so blown together that Charley wrinkled her nose at the garish display. The little girl had stopped laughing, at last.

"That's more like it," Charley said, feeling her nose rising a little higher as she did. "Show some respect for your elders."

Could have only been a year or two, but Charley was going to take it. Anything to avoid being laughed at.

---

The following 1 user Likes Charley Goode's post:1 user Likes Charley Goode's post
   Grace Riley

---

At the tone in the other girl's voice Grace quelled. There was no way she'd answer that and not get a dervisive response back.

It was the indignity of the girl's next statement, however, that Grace speaking up. "You're not that much older." She declared resolutely, pushing herself up to standing. Despite the fact that the girl looked to actually be quite a few years older, and did have almost a foot of height on her, she was still, afterall, a girl. Not a lady.

The following 1 user Likes Grace Riley's post:1 user Likes Grace Riley's post
   Charley Goode

"Oh yeah?" Charley bristled at the audacity of the little girl covered in the garish rainbow of pollen. There was nothing more she wanted to do than to wipe than indignant smirk off her face. The urchin felt her hands clench and open, it would be so easy to push Tiger Lily back down to the floor. Then she could stroll off, laughing and feeling high and mighty at last.

Except she wasn't really like that, and it wasn't really Tiger Lily making her mad.

"Then why do I sound like a grown-up," she asked in her clearer voice, raising her neck to stretch out her vocal chords. Then Charley shrank her neck, scrunching up until she was almost at Tiger Lily's nose and her voice came out cramped and squeaky again, "And you sound like a little girl?"

Charley could laugh at that part, anyway, taking a step away from her little rival. The rest of the flower show was still going on, somehow immune to the shower of colors she had been subjected to. That made for a good day to jump in the pond, what with all of Hogsmeade crammed into a stuffy room looking at flowers. Her nose wrinkled at the perfume of a thousand flowers, finding it reeking now.

"Go back to your mum's skirts, Tiger Lily," and she nearly spat the name this time. More like a paper tiger, anyway, one colored outside the lines with a toddler's dedication to art. Charley wondered if she'd ever get the pollen out of her clothes either, at least they weren't the soft, silky fabric of the little girl's.

Charley stopped dead as she looked at the little girl again, the color almost made Tiger Lily's dress look better when the light caught it. The urchin heard a growl in her throat —or perhaps it was her stomach— and meant it when she tried to hurt the little girl with a word this time. "You're a filthy, little flower, who'd want to look at you anyway?"

---

  

---

The girl sounded so far from an adult it was laughable. "You don't!" Grace declared stubbornly, her outrage the only thing mastering her shyness.

She tensed as she was dimissed, her fingers curling into fists. She didn't hide in her mother's skirts, well she kind of did.... when her mother was home. But that was besides the point. Only her brother got to accuse her of that. "I don't hide in her skirts." She asserted.

But then the girl got even worse. "I'm filthy?" Grace couldn't believe the urchkin would say something like that. Grace might have pollen on her but under it she was clean. This girl looked like she'd never showered in the first place. "Have you seen yourself?" Outrage had tears stinging Grace's eyes but she would not cry. She wasn't a baby no matter what this urchin said.

The following 1 user Likes Grace Riley's post:1 user Likes Grace Riley's post
   Charley Goode

"Do, too!"

It answered both of Tiger Lily's retorts, as laughable as they were. She was just a little girl, and Charley was older and more grown-up, of course. How could anyone think any different? Only some old bitty would think the urchin was still a child, and worse, a boy! Charley wrinkled her face until it looked as strange as she felt, wearing the clothes of many colors thanks to the flowery pollen.

"Well, it's no thanks to you," Charley put out, picking at the crusty pollen on her shirt. If the little girl hadn't been in her way, she would have been gone before the flowers vomited all over them. It made her feel sick at the back of her throat as she felt the stiff, uncomfortable fabric clinging to her in impossible ways. "Watch where you're falling next time!"

The urchin left Tiger Lily behind after that, wandering her way out into the sunlight. She ignored the looks from queuing attendants and passersby to the flower show, climbing up to the roofs would cut those off fast.

Plus, it would give her a better vantage point to find the best way to the Padmore Pond.

Or better yet, someone's waiting tub in their garden that she could get to first.

---

  

---