Getting to Know All About You (Oscar)

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Anna was late. She was supposed to be meeting with Oscar and she was excited, albeit anxious. Today she was supposed to get to know him better. This morning at breakfast she mentioned that she wanted to get to know him better and he came up with the idea that she should make a list of questions for him and that he would do the same thing for her. It was going to be their next date, talking with one another and really getting to know each other. So Anna spent the majority of the day trying to come up with questions and things she wanted to know about him and now she had a list in the pocket of her robes. She didn't know what she was actually going to ask or how they were going to do this, but she was mostly just excited to spend more time with him and get to know him better. Anna finally got to the third floor and rounded the corner almost at a jog in her excitement to see Oscar again, gasping when she ran into something. Rather, someone. Oscar. She grabbed him quickly to keep herself from falling and looked up, smiling at him. "I certainly wasn't expecting this to happen again," she told him with a wry smile.

@oscar

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Oscar was, for once in his life, on time, and Anna was late. He forgave her for it the moment it became obvious that she wasn’t going to be on time – she had forgiven his tardiness too many times for him not to forgive her right back. He hadn’t prepared as much for their meeting as he probably should have. They were going to try to get to know each other beyond just the basic things you learned from being friends with someone for a few months, and Oscar had totally forgotten to write down any questions. He was hoping that he would be able to answer first, and then whatever Anna asked him would trigger a question of his own. Oscar was lounging in the third floor corridor, waiting for something to happen, when he heard steps coming from around the corner. He approached, ready to turn and greet the owner of the steps, who he presumed to be Anna, when Oscar felt his body collide with someone else’s. “Well, hello to you, too.” Oscar said with a laugh when he realized that Anna had run into him again. He bent down to peck her on the cheek in greeting. “Ready to start?” He asked. He didn’t want them to get distracted and go off on a tangent, as they were prone to do.

@annelise

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Anna grinned as she looked up at Oscar and he kissed her cheek. She closed her eyes for a moment, reveling in the feeling, in the knowledge that he loved her, that he wanted her more than anyone else. How did she get that lucky. "Of course I am, are you?" she asked. "Do we want to do it right here or did you want to go somewhere else?" Anna gestured to the ground, smiling at the memories of everything that happened here over the past few months. She really didn't care where they had their conversation and privacy would be nice, but they hadn't done anything on the third floor for a while and it just seemed fitting. Biting her bottom lip for a second, she added, "Also, you should ask the first question." Anna doubted that Oscar would really want to start off, but she certainly didn't want to because she didn't know what kinds of questions to start with. Maybe if she suggested that he start, he would. She'd have to wait and see.

@oscar

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Anna asked if he was ready, and Oscar blinked at her. There was a significant amount of pause before his answer, but Oscar replied nonetheless, trying to play it off as just zoning out for a second. “Of course!” He replied, even though he wasn’t ready at all. He shrugged when Anna asked if they should move. “Right here is fine. We can always cast spell if we need more privacy.” There were plenty of charms that would allow them to talk without passersby hearing, though Oscar couldn’t imagine who would bother to eavesdrop on them, unless they wanted information about Anna being Champion.

Oscar’s face drained of color when Anna said that he ought to start with a question. He hadn’t prepared anything! Oscar searched his memory for something, anything, to ask, and he finally happened upon something that he had just been thinking about that would make a decent enough question. “What is your favorite spell?” Anna could see it as a way for him to look deeper into her psyche, but really, it was just buying Oscar some more time to think.

@annelise

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Oscar seemed to be a little bit distracted and Anna was a little bit curious about that, but she decided to just let it go for now. If he was distracted like this during their conversation she would probably end up calling him out about it, but she'd only do that if it got to that point. She smiled and sat down when he suggested they do it right there. Anna liked the idea of getting to know him better here, the first place she met him. She grinned at him, "That sounds great to me!"

He went white for a second and Anna was concerned. Was everything ok? She was about to ask him if something was wrong when he asked what her favorite spell was. Anna gave a small smile, though she still watched him carefully. What was going on with him? "This is probably weird but I like 'Expecto Patronum' because it has more than one use ... and it's pretty cool," she told him. "What about you? Also ..." she tried to decide which question she wanted to ask first. "What is your favorite food? That's not grape-flavored candy, I mean," she teased with a smile. She was curious.

@oscar

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Oscar raised his eyebrows when Anna said that she liked Expecto Patronum for is versatility and its coolness. She asked him what his favorite spell was in return, and Oscar paused before answering. “Accio. Simple, but useful.” He had considered saying Engorgio for the pillow fight they had had earlier that school year. She asked another question, and Oscar made a soft noise of protest. It wasn’t fair that she got to ask him two questions! Ozzy replied anyways. “Saltine crackers.” They were boring and bland, but Oscar kind of liked that – you could eat crackers with any food, and they would still taste good. Even when he was sick, Oscar ate crackers by the handful. “What about you?” If Anna got to ask two questions in one, then Oscar seemed no harm in turning her own strategy against her, and buying himself a little more time in doing so. At least his first question hadn’t been a horrible failure. His second one was less off the cuff, and Oscar was rather proud of the fact that he had managed to think of it. “What is your favorite poem?” Oscar hadn’t read much poetry, but he was fairly certain that he had an answer if Anna turned that question back on him like she had the first one.

@annelise

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Anna cocked her head at him when he heard some kind of a noise at her second question. Did he not like that she was asking another question? She just figured that asking him to answer the same question he asked was a copout, but unless he said something about it, she wasn't going to. She smiled when he said crackers, not expecting that at all. Anna smiled when he repeated the question right back at her. At least he wasn't protesting now. "I like soup," she said, shrugging a little. "Any kind of soup, really. I can't choose one." That wasn't really something Anna told lots of people, but there was no point in her keeping secrets from Oscar. She didn't want to. Then he asked her about her favorite poem and her mind went completely blank. It was ridiculous; Anna knew poems! But at this moment she couldn't think of one. Her mind raced, but after a while she smiled apologetically and shook her head. "I promise I'm not trying to cheat, but I can't think of a single poem at the moment ... am I still allowed to ask what yours is?" She waited for his answer, not even trying to squeeze another question in. How could she not think of a poem right now? It was completely ridiculous.

@oscar

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Soup. Oscar didn’t know why, but it was funny to him that Anna liked soup as much as he liked crackers. He could turn it into something about how they belonged together, like soup and crackers did, but he would much rather just revel in his amusement of the fact. “I think chicken soup is nice.” It was certainly the most ubiquitous soup, and Oscar had yet to meet a flask of chicken noodle soup that wasn’t to his liking. It was one of those things that was difficult to mess up.

Anna insisted that she couldn’t remember any poems, and Oscar narrowed his eyes at her. He couldn’t believe that she didn’t know any poems at all, but he supposed that her assertion that she couldn’t remember any at the moment was true. While he was hesitant to offer his answer, eventually Oscar did. “It is called I carry your heart with me.” Oscar told Anna. “We read it when I was first learning English.” At the time, he hadn’t thought much of it, but when his mothers had died, Oscar had returned to that poem, and read it over and over, devouring every word until they were burned into his brain. “It is by e.e. cummings.” He was a rather famous American poet, but Oscar didn’t know whether or not Anna was familiar with American writers, or only English ones. “I carry your heart with me.” Oscar said, reciting the first line softly. “(I carry it in my heart.)” Maybe it had meant to be a poem for lovers, but as someone who had lost many that he had loved, Oscar drew a certain comfort from the fact that no matter how long it had been, he carried their hearts with him always.

@annelise
(read the full poem here)

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Anna felt pleasantly surprised when Oscar didn't tease her for liking soup. Everyone seemed to find that so funny, though she didn't understand. He was grinning widely, but it didn't seem like he was laughing at her.

When she didn't tell him her favorite poem, Oscar looked suspicious, which she strangely found quite amusing. Anna started giggling a little, wondering if he would challenge her and demand she try to remember a poem. The thing was ... nope. She still couldn't think of any. After glaring at her for a while, Oscar finally told her about his favorite. She pursed her lips and tried to think, "I don't think I know that one," she told him after a few moments. She wanted to ask him about it, but he seemed hesitant to mention it in the first place, so she didn't want to make him feel more uncomfortable. She smiled when he told her the beginning. It sounded cute. "It sounds nice," Anna said with a smile. She was going to have to look it up or she'd ask him about it later. She grinned as a poem she liked finally did come to mind. "I remembered one of my favorites, if you still want to know ..." Anna trailed off, unable to resist the temptation to tease Oscar. It was too much fun, and now that they were really dating she didn't have to worry about it.

Anna didn't want Oscar to feel uncomfortable so she searched her mind for another question (she didn't want to look at her list unless he looked at one). "So ... do you have a favorite book then?" He said he liked to read, right? If not, she knew he read history books at least, so hopefully he would have some kind of a response.

@oscar

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Anna said that she didn’t know his favorite poem, and Oscar shook his head a little, letting out a faux-disappointed sigh. “I do not want to recite it all.” He told her. “But I will write it down, so that you can read it.” He wasn’t sure whether Anna would be willing to go through the work of finding a poetry anthology that contained that particular poem, and he wanted to be absolutely sure that she read it. Since he had it memorized, it made just as much sense for him to make a copy for her. When he looked through his belongings, though, Oscar couldn’t find a single scrap of parchment. “I can write it on you?” Oscar asked, batting his eyelashes at her. His quill wasn’t particularly sharp, so he didn’t think it would hurt her, but he still wanted to ask Anna’s permission before doing something like that.

“Of course I want to know!” Oscar replied when Anna said that she remembered one of her favorites. He was anxious to know what kind of poetry Anna liked – poems said a lot about a person, in Oscar’s opinion. He was half-tempted not to answer her question about the book until she answered what her favorite poem was, but Oscar decided that it would be better not to spite her like that. “It is very French, but Le Petit Prince is my favorite.” Oscar laughed, trying to dissipate how awkward he felt about his favorite book being a French fairy tale of sorts. “You?” He asked, buying time to think of a new question before asking it. “What is your dream job?” Oscar asked. If he and Anna were going to continue to date after school, then he wanted to know what she would be doing.

@annelise

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Oscar sighed, acting disappointed, but Anna didn't think he really was. After all, what were the chances that she would know his favorite poem? There were thousands of poems in the universe. It would have been a miracle if she did know his favorite. Anna nodded when he said he would write it down for her. She watched as he searched, probably for a spare bit of parchment. She couldn't see any, so she was about to say he could write it down for her later when he asked if he could write it on her. "On me?" Anna asked, more out of surprise than anything else. She grinned when he fluttered his eyelashes at her. "Why not?" She held her arm out to him after a second. "Is this enough space?" she asked hesitantly. She'd never done anything like this before, really, so she didn't know what to expect.

Anna laughed, pleased by his enthusiasm at wanting to know her poem. "Well, I think mine is pretty well-known," she started off, "but I actually really do like it. It's called The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost," Anna hesitated for a second. "Have you heard of it?" She didn't know if he would have or not, but she knew it by heart either way. Apparently they both had their favorite poems memorized. Just another way they were similar and Anna loved it. 

She cocked her head slightly when he said the name of his favorite book. She hadn't heard of it before. "I've never heard of that one," Anna commented lightly, not teasing her because he looked uncomfortable talking about it. Then he asked about her favorite book and Anna shrugged, trying to make it seem like it wasn't a big deal. When she was younger she read a lot and her preferred book could definitely be labeled as a girly one. "I like Persuasion by Jane Austin," she told him, wondering if he was familiar with that. She was very well-known to muggles, but that didn't necessarily mean that he would know about the author.

At his next question Anna bit her lip nervously. She was almost positive that he wasn't going to like her answer to this, but even after everything that happened in the first task, she still wanted to be an auror. "Don't get mad," she said, though she knew that probably wasn't a good way to start. "but I want to be an auror." Anna watched Oscar carefully, extremely curious about how he would react to that. Probably not positively, but she had to be sure.

@oscar

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Oscar nodded when Anna asked, rather incredulously, if he wanted to write it on her. After a moment of pause, she agreed, and Oscar smiled, uncapping his ink pot and grabbing a quill from his bag. Anna asked if there was enough space, and Oscar shrugged. “I will write small.” He replied. He began dipping the quill into the ink, careful not to smudge anything. Anna would probably feel silly enough with real words on her – just ink smudges would have been even stranger. Oscar continued to write as he listened to Anna talk about her favorite poem, one by Robert Frost. Oscar was certain that anyone who had read poetry had read that poem. “I have.” Oscar affirmed. He had read it at the beginning of his learning of the English language, however, so he was sure that he would appreciate it more now that he was more used to English. Oscar took a break from inking the poem into Anna’s skin, rolling his neck, which had been bent in a slightly awkward position when he had been writing on Anna. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” Oscar began, winking at Anna. He took a moment to bow his head again, wincing a little as he did so, to blow on the ink on Anna’s skin so it would dry before he moved onto the next stanza. Oscar couldn’t talk and write at the same time, so he decided to speak first to give the ink even more time to dry. “It is kind of like a fairy tale.” Oscar told Anna. “It is fairly simple French, I think.” Actually, that gave Oscar an idea. He would have to ask Anna about it later, though. When Anna named her favorite book, Persuasion, Oscar furrowed his brow. He thought he had heard of the author before, but the book itself didn’t ring a bell, He shook his head a little as he continued to write on Anna.

Oscar stopped again when Anna said that he couldn’t get mad at her for her career choice. That didn’t sound good. When she told him what it was, though, Oscar could understand why she thought he’d be mad. Oscar put the cap back on his ink jar so he didn’t accidentally knock it over, and put his quill on the floor, scooting away from Anna so she wouldn’t see how bad he was shaking. “You can not.” He told her, his voice betraying how upset he was. “You can not, because then you will die like he did!” Anna would die just like his father, and then he’d be alone.

@annelise

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Anna nodded when Oscar said that he would write small. Then he started and Anna closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the wall behind her. It tickled, but not in a way that made her want to twitch and laugh. It felt nice. As long as he was writing, she kept her eyes closed, answering and responding, but letting her body relax at the same time. She smiled when he said that he knew her poem. "I think everyone knows that one. I still love it though," she muttered, her breath soft as she enjoyed him writing on her arm. He stopped writing and she opened her eyes to see that he was looking at her. She grinned when he began to quote her poem. "Alright, I think I have now learned that you really like poetry," she stated, leaning her head back against the wall, shivering slightly when she felt him blowing on her arm. "Maybe you should tell it to me sometime," she commented off-hand when he explained a little about his story. She really didn't expect that to happen tonight. He was already writing a poem on her arm. 

He stopped writing again and Anna watched him carefully when she told him her decided job. She didn't expect him to like it, but she was astonished by his reaction. For a second she thought he was angry. He calmly seemed to put the cap on his in, put his quill down and then moved away from her. He told her she couldn't be an auror and Anna was about to ask him what was going on when he continued, saying that she couldn't because then she would die just like him. Him? What was Oscar talking about? "Oscar," she said softly, moving so she was closer to him again. "Oscar, what are you talking about?" she knew that aurors had a dangerous job and that it wasn't infrequent for them to die, but this seemed more personal than that. What was going on?

@oscar

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Oscar paused, smiling at Anna when she said that everyone knew her favorite poem. “Just because everyone knows it does not mean it is less valuable.” He said. He would still love the e.e. cummings poem even if everyone knew it, because it still would have had meaning to him, repetition be damned. Anna said that she learned he really liked poetry, and he laughed. Really liked was an overstatement, but he didn’t care about correcting Anna right now. He was having fun, writing on her, and now he had finished the poem. He had to pause in his blowing, partly because he was getting a little light-headed and partly because Anna was talking about The Little Prince. “I will read it to you sometime, in English.” Oscar promised. “Or, I could teach you French, so you could read it yourself.” He suggested. It was kind of a joke, but now that he thought about it… it would be nice to be able to talk to Anna in his native tongue, the way he talked to her in hers.

Oscar could feel himself shaking in fear when Anna asked what he was talking about. How did he explain this? “When my mothers died, I was still not of age.” He explained. “I was going to go into foster care, but one of the French Aurors was already a foster parent, and he took me.” Ozzy took a steadying breath. “And he adopted me.” He swallowed. “But then he died. At work.” And he couldn’t stand Anna dying like his father had. Oscar felt like he was on the verge of tears, and he was still shaking, and he couldn’t bear to look Anna in the eyes, because he could already tell that he was going to make her feel guilty, or disappointed, or both, and he didn’t want that.

@annelise

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Anna smiled right back at him, "Thank you," she told Oscar after a moment. English wasn't his first language, but he always seemed to word things just the right way and she loved the way he spoke. She looked down at her arm when he stopped writing on it again and blew on it. "Is there more?" she asked after a second. A part of her was hoping that there was. It felt nice to have him writing on her. Then again, she did want to read the poem, so if he was done then that could be a good thing too.

Her jaw dropped and Anna's mouth fell open when Oscar said that he would read it to her, or that she could learn French and read it herself. She smiled at him, "You want to teach me French then?" She asked, definitely pleased by the idea. It would be fun to be able to speak to Oscar in his own language. "I still think you should read it to me in English though. I want to hear you tell me a story." Maybe that was juvenile, but it was true. Now that she had the idea of Oscar reading her a story, she wanted it to actually happen.

Oscar was still shaking and Anna's attention was entirely focused on him. What was wrong? Then he started explaining about how a French Auror took him in after his mothers died. And then the man died as well. No wonder he had such an averse reaction when she said she wanted to be an auror. The thing was that as sad as his story was it still didn't take away her desire to be an auror, but she needed to help him calm down. "Oscar," she muttered as she moved closer and wrapped her arms around him tightly. She whispered into his ear, "It's okay. I'm not an auror." Yet. She didn't need to add that part though. "I'm right here with you," Anna added, not wanting to leave it at the fact that she wasn't an auror. She wanted Oscar to focus on the fact that she was with him now. She was safe and so was he. He didn't need to worry about anything in the near future.

@oscar