@rolestrange
Isla had spent so much preparing herself for the event that she hadn't done her homework from before, telling herself that she would finish it after -- but then those poor people went missing, and she hadn't the heart in her to sit down and force herself to work, not in the face of such tragedies. Professor Forrester had given her an extension -- and whether or not this was because of her or her last name, she wasn't sure; she was never sure -- and thus Isla was inside the library catching up her on her Charms essays, though she kept getting -- distracted -- thinking about the night of the Maquerade, thinking about Bilius and his kiss. She could stop thinking about how he had kissed her -- soft and affectionate, like it mean something more than he had said it did -- and how he had said such nice things to her; how he had looked at her with such a nice look on his nice face, so -- nice. She was so distracted thinking about Bilius and how nice he was, that she start doodling his name over and over on her parchment, surrounding his name with little hearts and flowers before she realised what she was doing, and -- still half-absent, though now half-aware -- writing his name and hers together inside another heart, a larger, louder heart, filling it with smaller curled hearts and swirls. Once she had filled up most of her piece of parchment with her doodles, she realised the implications of her doodles and started to scribble out her work, blushing a bright red as she did so -- not a beautiful red, not like a rose, but rather like a tomato. Like even her cheeks couldn't be romantic; like even her cheeks were ridiculous. She burned tomato-red -- in spite of the heart inside of her that kept blooming rose-red and beautiful with each heart-beat, each heart-beat that sounded out his name; the combination of her heart-beat and the rhythm of his name making the tune to her new favourite song. She didn't manage to cross out all of her doodles, however -- at least, not before someone came up to her and sat in the chair that was opposite to her own. She looked up in a start, biting down on her bottom lip -- hard, hard enough to force her head out of the clouds and back down to the ground -- and tugging it into her mouth, smoothing down her hair (she was sure that it looked as ruffled and out-of-order as she felt), her cheeks flaming scarlet in embarassment and nerves and -- something hotter than both embarassment and nerves combined; something that felt a lot like fire, like her stomach was a burning house, collapsing in on itself. Her eyes were wide and uncertain as she stared at the person across from her -- Roberta Lestrange: who she knew from her parents' balls was another member of the Sacred 28; who knew she knew from Hogwarts was the twin sister of that awful Francis Lestrange. "Um," she started to speak, sitting up a little straighter and swallowing down her nerves. "Hello."