Finders Keepers, Closed - Malcolm Belby Options

[Drusilla Greengr...]

Drusilla loved lunchtime. She didn’t have any particular enjoyment of the food at PHP Academy, but she loved that people tended to spread out and ignore her more than usual. Drusilla believed in using the time to her advantage. Across the room there was a whole row of coats and backpacks just waiting to be looted!

The small mousey brunette skittered across the room, sticking to the shadowed edge of desks away from the window and began her favorite part of the day- acquisitions.

She tugged the end of something blue out of a jacket she couldn’t discern as masculine or feminine. The distinction wasn’t all that important to Drusilla, as she had a hard enough time just discerning between boys and girls –let alone their clothing. Drusilla was not the brightest crayon in the box.

The object wrought from her effort appeared to be a glove woven out of the most garish combination of orange and blue possible. Drusilla was delighted. For some reason she was drawn to the garish and gruesome. Perhaps it was a subconscious rebellion against the her drab countenance. Then again, Drusilla wasn’t complicated enough for such a display, not even subconsciously.

Her happiness at finding the glove was momentarily dampened when she noticed there was only one. “Maaan.” Grumpy now, Drusilla yanked the coat off the hanger and up-ended it in an effort to shake free the glove that was clearly hiding from her. Not that it would have been hard for a glove to outwit Drusilla if it tried. The second glove finally fell out after several forceful shakes. Turns out it had been in the same pocket as the first one. Imagine that. Hiding in the place you’d expect it to be. How rude.

Drusilla quickly put on both gloves and admired them for a moment before stepping over the owner of the gloves’ coat and digging through the next garment in line. Who knew what treasures she’d find?

[Sir Malcolm Belb...]

Malcolm loved lunchtime! When you ate a sandwich during class time the teacher gave you an evil look. When you wandered off to climb a tree during class time the teacher sent someone to bring you back. Almost anything you could do, you weren't supposed to in class time. But at lunchtime you could do anything.

So far he had exercised his lunchtime freedom by lying face down in the grass and watching ants, but now he was getting hungry. Ants ate crumbs bigger than their whole bodies, and that was incredible, but Malcolm thought he might just like an apple. There was one in his bag, so he picked himself up and trundled over to the classroom.

One of the girls from class was looking for something in her coat and had knocked down Malcolm's. He picked it up and replaced it on the hook, looking over at the girl. "What's your name? I like your gloves," he said, and stared at them for a moment. "I think because they are my gloves. I'm Malcolm. My mum made them."

He gave the gloves a considered look. "Do you like them? My mum made my jumper, too." He stretched it out so she could see the many varieties of owl knitted in said jumper. "She makes a lot of things. I guess your mum doesn't make gloves, so you can probably have mine. I've got lots at home."

[Drusilla Greengr...]

Drusilla shoved some candies in her pocket and was about to replace yet another person's coat when a voice startled her. She froze for a second but quickly determined she was no good at being invisible and turned around. "Uh, Nothing." Wait that wasn't an appropriate answer to the question she'd been asked. "I mean Drusilla. I'm Drusilla Greengrass." She tried to tilt her nose up in the air like some of her elegant cousins, but the wrenching, over-done action hurt her neck and made it hard to see the boy she was talking to. So she gave up on it and shrugged.

"You like my gloves?" Her face brightened. "They're brand new I uh.. just acquired them you see-- YOUR GLOVES?! They most certainly are not your gloves. You see, I am wearing them. That makes them my gloves. You dont have any gloves. You see," Drusilla pointed at the boy's hands. "Because you aren't wearing any." Logic wasn't her forte and she was thankfully saved from her circular logic by the boy's lack of offense at her theft.

She nodded at his presented shirt. It was hideous. Drusilla quite fancied it. She reached out as if to admiringly touch the shirt but yanked it hard instead. When that didn't free the shirt from the boy's person (as if it would have /hur) Drusilla frowned and rocked back on her heels. "Solid, Malcolm." She commented and nodded in agreement over their parents. "My mum makes investments." Drusilla noted with pride.

Really that was just what she had skimmed from her father who said her mum was really good at investing in the right husbands. She always came away with a small fortune. Drusilla didn't know exactly what that meant, but her dad always said it with the kind of tone that made her think it was true. Maybe someday Drusilla could be an investor like her mum. "I was going to keep them," Drusilla frowned and tried to think of how the situation had turned on her. She really wasn't a very effective bully. This was the second person who had offered to give her something she'd attempted to steal from them. What was it with people these days?

"What do your parents do? Are they important?" Drusilla remembered to tack on the last bit. She knew it was important for her not to socialize with people who were not "Important". Unfortunately, Drusilla didn't know how to gage that on her own aside from asking straight out. She really needed to stick with Antigone, so the girl could better instruct her on people and decorum.

[Sir Malcolm Belb...]

Malcolm nodded along as the girl, Drusilla, attempted to explain why the gloves were hers when, clearly, they were his. "You can see they're boy gloves," he said, pointing to them as though orange were the universal symbol of manliness. Perhaps it might have carried more weight if his owl jumper weren't knitted in various shades of purple.

Which jumper, by the way, seemed quite popular with this Drusilla character. "Thank you," he said politely as she pulled at it, then he attempted to look understanding while she said something about her mother's investments. He was more interested in a little spiderweb clinging to one of the coathooks, but was trying very hard not to be rude.

He managed to wrench his attention back around to his newest best friend (because of course that's what she was, to add to his growing collection of best friends).

"I was going to keep them," Drusilla said while looking at her new gloves.

"Okay," Malcolm said. "I'm giving them to you."

Abruptly, the conversation turned back to parents. "My parents are heaps important to me," he told her with a bright smile. "All parents are important." It didn't quite look like that was what she'd meant, though, so Malcolm shuffled his feet thoughtfully and watched a little spider jump onto the coathook web. "Well, my dad does consulting things, and my mum paints." Did that sound important enough? Maybe not, and he did want to make sure Drusilla really was a new best friend. "My mum has a painting hanging in a lobby at the Ministry? And my dad, I guess ... well, my great-uncle is famous. Does that count?"

Malcolm bet Drusilla's parents were really important if she had to check on the importance of everyone she met.

[Drusilla Greengr...]

"Uh . . ." Drusilla had never been asked to evaluate the worthiness of someone else before. When asked people invariably believed they were important, so Drusilla could just assume they were until told otherwise. This was a curious situation. "Maybe." There. A good decisive answer. Drusilla was proud. She picked up the next girl's jacket in line and found a note in the pocket.

Drusilla- This is Antigone's Jacket. Dont touch her stuff. Put the note back in the pocket and hang it back up.

Antigone was so thoughtful leaving a note right where she knew Drusilla would find it. That's a real best friend for you, always giving you clear instructions. Drusilla smiled at the note and put it back in the pocket before hanging the jacket back up. "Are you going to help or not? If you don't tell anyone you could maybe find something you liked to keep." That was assuming, of course, Drusilla didn't want it also. "We have to hurry now if we're going to be done before lunch is over."

That sort of sounded like what they (because now Drusilla counted Malcolm as involved as she) were doing was wrong. Which wasn't the case at all. "Not that there's anything wrong with foraging. Animals do it all the time in the wilderness, it's how we survive." Drusilla nodded thoughtfully. Yeah, that sounded good. It would probably assuage anything Malcolm would have said . . . if he didn't have a problem being compared to an animal.

She turned back to the next coat and picked up Antigone's again, found the note again and replaced the coat with the note back in the pocket. She should really work on her memory. Looting jackets wouldn't take half as much time if she could remember where in the process she was. "Here hold this." Drusilla shoved a boy's jacket on Malcolm and started rummaging inside it.

[Sir Malcolm Belb...]

"Maybe" wasn't too bad. It was better than "no", anyhow. Malcolm gave Drusilla a big grin and a big "thank you!" to match. Then she continued picking up jackets.

"I don't think these are all your coats," Malcolm pointed out, helpfully. But she didn't seem to think this was helpful at all. That could have been a little bit hurtful, really, but Malcolm was sure she just didn't realise he had started helping yet.

"We could just keep doing this after lunch," he suggested. Malcolm was sure nobody would mind if they stood there checking coats while everybody else went back into class. Why would they?

"Squirrels forage." His voice grew more solemn now, as they were moving to the Animal Facts portion of the conversation. "And other animals. If we're foraging together it's group foraging, like dogs or lions."

Drusilla shoved a jacket into his chest and Malcolm grabbed it automatically. "I read it in a book. Some animals forage on their own, and that's solitary foraging." She rummaged about inside the jacket and Malcolm became distracted by some birds flying by.

When they were out of sight he turned his face back to stare at Drusilla's brown head while she foraged. Suddenly inspired, he asked "what's your favourite animal?"

[Drusilla Greengr...]

"Uh huh," Drusilla commented less-than-convincingly. Truth was, as soon as her new companion started talking about knowing things, Drusilla had tuned him out. She didn't know anything. So whatever he was talking about she wouldn’t have been able to follow even if she'd tried. And she knew because she had tried to follow people's conversations in the past to no avail. "Totally." She agreed to his suggestion of continuing their assault on other people's possessions. Until she realized what she was agreeing to.

"No- wait. We can't keep doing this after lunch. Someone would notice." While Drusilla thought it was perfectly acceptable to keep whatever she found while looking through other people's things, after all - they had been left unattended; clearly these people didn't want their stuff. If they wanted to keep it, they'd leave helpful notes like Antigone, or clearly mark everything as theirs. Unfortunately other people didn't always agree with Drusilla on this issue, and Drusilla lacked the ability to enforce her beliefs.

"Uh huh." The boy did seem to go on, didn't he? Well, whatever made him happy. He was helping her and not trying to take anything for himself- she rather liked this boy; except that he seemed to expect her to have an opinion on everything. "Uh . . . Well . . . What's your favorite animal?" Ha. Take that witty-man! Right back at ya. Although most people didn't seem to have the problem forming opinions that Drusilla did, she felt better about getting his opinion, if he had one. Then she could just copy his. Hopefully she would remember this plan in the future and be able to apply it the next time she was faced with such a dilemma. Social situations were hard.

[Sir Malcolm Belb...]

"Yep, probably." Malcolm still didn't see the problem. If they were just foraging because Drusilla needed food, nobody would mind letting them carry on. Being at your desk and paying attention during class was just a formality, and one Malcolm rarely observed under even the best of conditions. And as to the foraging, well, who would begrudge one of their classmates a bite to eat, when they were so starving as to resort to rummaging through coats for it?

"My favourite animal," Malcolm muttered, and began to give the matter some serious thought. There were lots of different animals, each with different qualities. Some were fast, some were strong, some were fluffy, some could sing ... it went on like that for a long while. "I think ... that every animal is my favourite." He smiled at Drusilla. "Because there's something nice about every one."

She hadn't stopped foraging. "You know," he ventured, suddenly a little shy, "if you're really that hungry you could have half of my apple. It's in my bag, I can get it if you want."

Maybe the real reason Drusilla didn't want to continue after lunch was that she was embarrassed not to be seen foraging but for people to know she'd forgotten to bring her lunch to school.

[Drusilla Greengr...]

"That's a good answer. I concur." Drusilla had noticed that her father often agreed with a declaration of 'I concur', when he wanted to sound important. Or when he realized his own opinion was of probably no import. Since Drusilla almost never had an opinion, she had adopted a similar practice.

She dropped whatever coat she was holding and spun around to face Malcolm after his next statement. For the first time she he approached she gave him her full attention. "What? Hold on, you're serious?" Imagine that, he'd been holding out on her this whole time!

Grinning, she slapped Malcolm on the shoulder in a friendly fashion, "Well why didn't you say so! Where's your bag? What else do you have? Are you sharing with anyone else?" Gloves, a piece of candy nine sickles and a dungbom, now half an apple . . . it was her lucky day! And also a talkative day, normally Drusilla couldn't be bothered to string so many words together in one sitting.

"Do you always bring enough food to share with other people?" In a rare moment of forethought she wondered if Malcolm might become a constant supply of eateries. She could probably do with some more to eat, no matter what she ate she never seemed to gain a pound and tended to look on the thin side.

[Sir Malcolm Belb...]

Drusilla had a fancy way of talking, with her 'concur's and her ... 'I's. When a person was as fancy as that, you knew the reason they didn't have their lunch with them was not that they'd forgotten it, but that the golden lunchbox encrusted in rubies and diamonds was actually too heavy to carry to school. What a burden fancy people bore. Malcolm knew all about it, of course, because he read books.

She spun around and he nodded solemnly. "I am serious," he said slowly and in his most serious voice. "There is an apple."

The onslaught of questions required some thought, and Malcolm liked to think through each one carefully before answering any, so there was a bit of silence before he replied.

"Not today. Sometimes I share with other people. I let Hedwig share my sandwich once but she was sick that day and threw up, so she didn't get to appreciate it properly. I guess the other things I have are ... my schoolbooks? And spare socks, because sometimes you need to take off your shoes and walk in the grass, but my dad says it's bad to put shoes back on over wet socks. What's your opinion?"

He nodded again, even more seriously than before, although he would not have thought it possible until this moment. "You always have enough to share if somebody else has less than you," Malcolm informed his new best friend. "That's what my mum says."