I won't tell if you won't

Alli's favorite spot of anywhere on the Hogwarts grounds was just beyond the pumpkin patch by the caretaker's cabin, behind a small hill. Hardly anyone went there, since it was so close to being out of bounds for students, so it was always calm and peaceful. She hadn't even taken Jasmine or Jude there before.

She sat down on the hill, far enough down that anyone approaching from behind would not see her at first, and put her bag beside her. From the bag, she took out several muggle contraptions that she had "borrowed" from some of the muggleborn students. She poked and prodded at them and fiddled around with them, trying to figure out what they did and how they worked. "What are you?" she grumbled in frustration at one of the objects.

James had good intentions to visit the library to do some research, but opted for outside instead. It was too nice of a day not to (that was his reasoning behind it, anyway).

James wandered around the lake for a while not finding anything remotely interesting and decided to actually head to the library and read for a while, when he saw a familiar face sitting on a hill. He didn't particularly want to talk to her, but she would definitely see him walk up towards the castle. If it was one thing James had learnt from his mother, it was that one should not deliberately ignore a girl; Nothing quite as frightening or stupid as that.

He walked up to her, and on closer inspection saw her fiddling with objects that James had no clue about. "What are you?" he heard her say.

"Well.. I'm a boy, about 5"0 and a Gryffindor."

Alli looked up and saw James, the boy who had gone into the forest with her and Sami standing there. "Oh, it's you," she put on a mask of distaste.

After spending some time with him she had realized that she didn't quite hate him, more like she was indifferent, but he was a Gryffindor, so she knew that, as a proud Slytherin, she should hate him.

"Look, unless you know what this thing is or what it does and want to tell me..." she gave it a rather violent shake to see if it would do anything, "... I suggest you continue your walk."

James, watched on, rather amused at Alli's attempt at trying to figure out what the contraption was. He had no idea, but he wasn't about to tell her that. It wasn't often that a Slytherin would openly admit that they didn't know something, and more the better that a Gryffindor might in fact, know what it was. He could have some fun with this, even though she would figure out very quickly that he, too, had no idea what the object was.

"Oh that! Yeah, I know what that is. I'm surprised you don't, actually," he stated, in a superior manner.

Leave it to the bloody Gryffindor to actually know what it was... "I am aware that my intelligence is astonishing, but even I don't know everything. If I did, my brain would be disproportionate to my head and it would ruin my hair," she said snippily.

Alli mumbled incoherent nonsense at it and gave it another shake, just in case it would change its mind and decide to do something.

"Well, what is it then?" she demanded once she was frustrated enough that she was going to launch it at a tree just for the satisfaction of seeing it shatter into hundreds of little pieces.

James actually laughed, more from the image than from anything else. He could envision Alli with an enormous head. Funny stuff.

He took a seat on the hill, and watched as Alli grew more and more frustrated. He wondered if it was such a good idea to led her on thinking that he knew what it was. If her ire stayed at this rate, she would probably use him as target practice.

James never was a good liar and caved in. "Yeah.. I don't know what it is. It looks Muggle to me, and I'm Pureblood." He snatched the item from her and turned it over in his hands. "Where'd you get it from anyway?"

Alli felt like she could kick him when James revealed that he was just as clueless as she was when it came to this kind of thing, but it would have required too much effort on her part to shift to where her leg was at a better angle to reach him. Though... it was an action that Jude and Jasmine would be proud of if she'd done it.

"I borrowed it from a Hufflepuff," she replied, snatching it back from him on the word 'borrowed'.

James smiled slightly. From James' perspective, Alli seemed the type to have a rough, tough exterior, but he didn't find her too bad. James could handle his brother and this girl didn't seem any more difficult than Phillip on a bad day; she would be a breeze.

"Borrowed, hey?" he asked, as she took the item from him again. "I wouldn't have though you'd be on friendly enough terms with a Hufflepuff to warrant borrowing something off of one of them."

"Never said I was," Alli replied coolly, bringing the object closer to her face to examine it and she turned it over in her hands.

She sighed and mentally declared it useless, meaning it was sent sailing back over her shoulder and left to the mercy of whoever happened to stomp around in the grass back there. She pulled something else out of her bag to have a look. She had accrued quite the nice little collection of objects between this year and last, so she had a lot of things to check out.

"What are you doing out here anyway?" she asked, tossing the new object at him when she gave up on it.

James nodded slowly, thinking that Alli's idea of borrowing meant taking things without the owners' permission.

"Right," he replied, equally as coolly. He watched as she discarded the object over her shoulder. A thief and a litterer, he thought.

Being caught off guard, James wasn't sure how he managed to catch the object she near pelted at him, but he did. "I didn't fancy going to the library, so I decided to take a walk instead," James replied, but now he rather regretted not going to the Library in the first place.

"Drop it!" Alli said as she looked over her shoulder at him. "I wasn't going to leave it there. It's just going to sit there for a few minutes while it thinks about how naughty it's been by not telling me what it is," she said stubbornly.

"And I'm going to give them back," she insisted, though she mentally added if I can remember who I took them from in the first place.

She fiddled with the next object, a sort of rectangular cylinder that sounded like it had water inside. It had a small wheel type thing on top, which Alli discovered moved. She tried to spin it faster and was shocked when a flame shot out of it, causing her to shriek in surprise and drop it.

She immediately turned around and glared at James to head him off at the pass. "If you tell anyone that I made that noise, you will not live to speak another word," she threatened.

James smiled slightly. "Like in the naughty corner?" he asked, thinking it rather comical that she described an object as such.

"You can have it back if you want. I've no idea what it is."

James somewhat dazed off, but turned his attention back as he saw from the corner of his eye, a bright spark, and heard Alli's rather high-pitched (and very girly) squeel. James sniggered.

"I won't tell anyone," he blatantly lied, thinking that he'd pass on that information to Andy when he next saw him. Who would have thought that Allison Walker could emit such a sound? Priceless.

"What was the flash?" he asked, looking at the cylinder shaped item, now residing on the grass. "That thing?" he pointed towards it.

"Exactly like in the naughty corner, except that we're outside, so there aren't any corners for it to sit in, but let me tell you, if there were corners, that's where it would be," she assured him.

She wasn't even sure why she was talking to him, something she realized as she glared at him for snickering at her. "Yeah, sure you won't. And no, genius, that flash wasn't made by that thing. It was me. I'm a bloody dragon," she said in her driest voice.

She cautiously gave it a poke, just in case it decided to do it again, but it seemed to have died or something. She picked it up and gave it a once over. "Make it do it again," she commanded as she tossed it at him.

James actually laughed at the image that her words provoked. "A dragon hey? Gee, you sure hide that well." James steadied his look. "It was a just question though. It could have been that thing, or you could have done it. You are a witch, are you not?"

He watched her poke the object, feeling his body subconsciously move away from it, as though it would suddenly become animate and kill them all.

He flinched as she tossed it to him. "Hey! Watch it!" he cried, but caught it. He turned it over, looking at the strange wheel, feeling the urge to place his thumb over it and flick towards. His eyes widened as a flame appeared, and as he moved his thumb it disappeared as though it had never been.

"Wicked!" James exclaimed, re-enacting his prior movements to create the flame again. He grinned. "A fire maker!" James shook his head. "Muggles think of everything!"

"I am well aware that I'm a witch but obviously my wand is nowhere near my hand, so how could it have been me?" Alli pointed out.

Talking to him was such a waste of her time but then again it was almost amusing. She was enjoying their banter, perhaps a bit more than she should have. She rolled her eyes at his excitement. "Yeah, brilliant. They invented Incendio, what a bunch of intelligent human beings. Have they thought of anything that they didn't steal from us? I doubt it," she sniffed.

James shrugged. How was he to know her wand wasn't anywhere near her. James seemed to think that Alli thought he was a mind reader.. or just really good at Divination.

James put a hand to his chin, thinking about her question. "Hmm.. I don't really know. I don't think they intentionally steal things from us. They are just slow on the uptake, and besides, they find Muggle ways to use the magic we have. Take Incendio for example. We just cast the spell, but they use..." James paused. He really wasn't very up to date on Muggle technology. He indicated to the object still in his hand instead of trying, and probably failing, to explain how Muggles created fire. "This."

Alli smirked when James said that Muggles were slow on the uptake. "Yeah, slow like a snail trying to get from Antarctica to the North Pole," she commented quietly.

It wasn't that she thought that muggles were as dumb as a box of rocks, but they took forever to learn new things, and they were clearly dumb enough to think that magic didn't really exist even though they saw signs of it every day. "It was probably invented by a witch or wizard anyway," she said. She doubted that half of their inventions were thought up by actual muggles. There was no way that a muggle actually thought up what they called "the Internet" all on his or her own. It just wasn't feasible.

She sifted through the pile of stuff and found another contraption nearly identical to the red one that James was holding, though it was green. "You can keep that if you like," she said. It was oddly generous of her, but if she had this one and could do magic anyway, she hardly needed two of them.

James nodded his head. That fire was invented by someone magical made sense to James. He stretched out his feet, leaning back against the grassy surface of the hill. He placed one of his arms over his head, leaving the other still clutching the fire creator by his side.

"How generous of you," James said dryly, swirling the object between his fingers. "When I'm without a wand and I'm in need of a roaring flame, I'll be all set." James really didn't think he'd ever come across a situation where those circumstances would happen, but he pocketed the object anyway; the fact that it had once belonged to someone else forgotten.

Alli couldn't help but roll her eyes at him. What wizard would ever be without a wand? What a ridiculous notion. He seemed to have forgotten to scold her for her tendency to "borrow", which was fine by her. She didn't really need a lecture on how stealing was bad, blah blah blah, shouldn't do it, blah blah.

She was starting to think that, for a Gryffindor, he wasn't so bad, but she wasn't about to tell him that. She took the remaining objects out of her bag and set in the grass in between them. "Anything strike your fancy?" she asked since she had no idea which one to examine next.

James looked across towards the assortment of objects that Alli had 'acquired'.

"When did you decide to take up a career in the field of kleptomania?" he asked, smirking. He really didn't care about the matter as much as he should have. His mother would be lecturing him about mixing with the wrong crowds right about now, but he couldn't care less.

"Hmm..." James picked up an odd looking object, and brought it close to his face. "Yeah.. Muggles are strange."

"You can't have a career in kloptomania," Alli replied, rolling her eyes at him. "Kleptomania is a mental disorder which compels its sufferers to steal items usually of little or no significant value. And before you say a word, no I do not have kleptomania."

She quietly watched him select and start to examine another one of the items she had gotten. "I just have a healthy curiosity for muggles and the ability to find some of the answers for myself," she added. Her reasoning may have been a bit skewed, bu she didn't really care.

She crossed one leg over the other. "What do you think it does?" she asked.

James poked his tongue out at the girl, which was childish, he knew, but she was being a know it all.

"Yeah, yeah... you know what I meant," he stated, still fiddling with the object in his hand, shrugging. He obviously wasn't helping Alli to find some of the answers so she was just lucky that she had her oh so know-it-all brain to get the answers for her.

"Why do you care anyway?" he asked. She said she had a healthy curiosity for Muggles, but really, why did she care what the objects were, and what they did. It wasn't like she was ever going to need to use them.

"I see, so you can comment on that but it's not going to stop you from keeping the fire maker thing?" Alli said with an amused look on her face. It clearly didn't bother him enough to not keep her pseudo-gift.

She shrugged at his question. "I don't know. Why do you care if I care?" she replied. Truthfully, she was just intrigued by the way that muggles did things. It was interesting to see how they lived with magic, even if she did still think it was a lower way of living.

James didn't really even think of that. He pulled out the fire maker again, and then shrugged. He was turning a new leaf, taking a page out of some book, and doing all other sorts of analogies that he couldn't think of. James was sick of being the good one in the family; he was gonna have some fun.

He pocketed the fire-maker again. "Yeah, well... I like it, so if anyone asks, I'm just gonna say I found it."

James shrugged again, something he found himself doing an awful lot. "I don't care. I was starting conversation. If you'd prefer to sit in silence, we can do that. Or you can leave."

"Found it? What a lame answer. And you people wonder why Gryffindors get no respect," Alli flicked her own fire-marker, just to see if she had the hang of it. It still gave her a small fright, but not nearly as big of a shock as the first time.

Leave? Was this boy completely insane? "Um, excuse me, I was here first!" she said indignantly. "I was here first, so if you're not enjoying yourself then you can leave."