Pressure Forms Diamonds {Open}

[Padril Crennent]

Padril was wandering, staggering, floating, walking. He was aware that he was disconcerted, confused but also aware that he was brimming with a million emotions. Emotions were always a difficult thing for him to express, it seemed that he naturally didn't show them. But the news of Aethie's pregnancy...Every barrier was broken. Nothing was the same.

He had no clue whether he was in the streets of London or a park. He didn't care. He was shell-shocked. He felt like he was wandering through a battle, death and conflict swirling around him, immune to it all while he attempted to understand. It was bright though, he was aware of that. And he was cold. He had no idea what he was wearing, but he was cold. He had a quill out and was writing. He was vaguely aware that it was the best writing he had ever written.

He was bare-footed, his feet bleeding and torn from all the walking he had been and was doing. But he had to do this. He had to. Everything was ruined. He had maintained some normality when Aethie had told him, but now he had to let it out. Had he been screaming? He didn't remember. Everything as over.

He had been living his dream. Doing what he loved. Living on the edge. Genuinely helping people. It was ruined now. All gone. Faded. Now it seemed like a dream. It didn't even matter that he achieved his life's ambition. Nothing really mattered anymore. He was stuck in conformity. He needed a job, which would mean he would have to lie and please people. Everything was wrong.

He stopped suddenly, eyes misty with thoughts and regrets. He screamed. Or thought he did. The sound didn't register. He was drifting.

(The thread is open to anyone. Padril doesn't know where he is, so feel free to say whatever.)

[Susie Kennedy]

Susie shivered slightly as she walked through muggle London. It was cold, unusually cold for this time of year. Pulling her jacket tighter around her shoulders she quickened her pace, already looking forward to the steaming cup of tea she planned to have as soon as she reached her flat.

She paused suddenly however. Something seemed to have caught the street's attention, someone seemed to be causing a disturbance. Curious, Susie began to make her way over. Once she got close enough to see her jaw dropped open. Padril Crennant was standing in the middle of the street, holding everyone up. Susie stared for a moment or two, he was just standing there, stock still as though in shock.

Susie hadn't seen Padril since she'd graduated from Hogwarts and it wasn't as though she had known him at all really, but she still felt that she had to go to him. He looked as though he needed help and as a healer Susie couldn't just leave him standing there, not when he looked so shell-shocked. And apart from anything else, he was a wizard, in the centre of muggle London, and he had already started to draw attention to himself.

She made her way over to him and tentatively put her hand on his arm. "Padril?" she asked gently. "Are you alright?" Susie was bright red and extremely conscious of the passers-by who kept looking back, wondering what the matter was. "What are you doing here, in muggle London?" she asked as she began to lead him down the street, anxious to get away from the onlookers.

[Padril Crennent]

"The idea of attributing names to a collection of buildings is laughable. London, Paris, Sydney. Each conjure different images but are all the same thing. Buildings. People in buildings. Attempting to establish order to chaos. Attempting. Trying. They put names on sections of buildings, laws to abide by. What are laws? Who has the right to tell me what I can and can't do? They don''t know me. They don't understand. We're consequence-free." He allowed himself to be lead by Susie, his self-inking quill already writing again into the book. Needless to say, his writing was much more articulate than his voice.

"That building. That used to be lines on paper. And before that, an idea in someone's head. We are a world of ideas, living in a dream and we cannot realize it." A little corner of his mind knew he was being a madman, that he was just being insane but he didn't want to stop. He had twenty-years of emotions to get off his chest.

"First met Harley behind a bike shed at school. Kids had tried calling me names, tried to bring down my ego. I told them to fuck off, the cunt-bags and go back to gutter where they popped out of their bitch-whore mothers. I was eight. They started beating me up. I would have some missing teeth if it wasn't for magic. Harley came. He was huge for his age. Those that didn't run got a good flogging. I kind of hate him for it. Getting bashed was my independence. A sign I would never surrender my ideas or beliefs. He ruined it."

[Susie Kennedy]

((Edited.))

Susie breathed a sigh of relief as Padril allowed her to lead him. She was thankful that he hadn't resisted, though she could still feel the onlookers' eyes on their backs as they walked away. It didn't help that his pen was apparently writing by itself, although Susie was doing her best to shield that from the muggles.

"Padril?" she asked. "Can you stop writing please? The muggles, they're watching" she told him cautiously, unsure of how he'd react to being asked not to write.

Susie frowned, Padril's behaviour was erratic, and she knew that she should really bring him to Mungo's, but something told her that Padril's behaviour wasn't due to a hex or a mis-cast spell, it looked like he was having some sort of nervous breakdown. Susie figured she could at least try and talk to him, but if that didn't work she'd have to take him to Mungo's, he had afterall risked exposing himself in the middle of a crowded street.

[Padril Crennent]

"Stop writing?" he laughed. "Why the heck would writing make them suddenly aware of all our secrets? Reading, on the other hand." He danced out of Susie's reach and went down a alleyway, writing as he did so. "Reading is everything. Break the barriers. Fight the beliefs. Fight tradition. Viva la revolution!" He jumped over a trashcan and twisted to wait for Susie.

He yelled over to her, "Names and words are simply sounds and ink. They cannot describe anything or anyone. They are simply attempts to define something undefinable, the human soul. And we are nothing but feelings and emotions, after you strip everything that you have been taught away. After you do that, I believe we can understand ourselves better!" He was tearing at his shirt, trying to take it off, as if that would strip everything he had been taught.

[Susie Kennedy]

'Why the heck would writing make them suddenly aware of all our secrets?'

"Cause you look like a madman" Susie muttered through gritted teeth, though it was too low for Padril to hear now that he'd jumped out of reach. Susie frowned as she tried to make sense of what Padril was saying, but she couldn't. She didn't understand what exactly he was trying to say to her.

She sighed loudly, he was making less sense than ever now, not to mention that he appeared to be taking his shirt off. At least they were in an almost-deserted alleyway, though Susie could see someone approaching from the other end.

"Padril" she said, louder this time. "Can you stop talking for a minute, and answer me?" she asked, slightly more forecefully than she'd intended. "What are you doing here? You're not even wearing shoes and your feet are all cut and bleeding."

[Padril Crennent]

Padril approached Susie, his writing finally ending with a flourish of a full stop. The quill dropped to the ground and the book was gripped firmly in Padril's hand as he wily gestured. "What are laws? What are they?"

"Someone has said them. Made a sound. Put ink on paper. And this stops us from doing things? People have all these different interpretations, they forget about what's really important." He was pushing the book at Susie, trying to make her understand without offering it to her.

"You've got to break out of what you've been raised in."

[Susie Kennedy]

"Did you hear anything I just said?" Susie asked Padril evenly once he'd stopped writing. He certainly didn't appear to have heard anything at all. Susie took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself, loosing her temper now would not be a good idea. She was very tempted to just apparate home and leave him there, though she knew she wouldn't leave him, not like this.

'You've got to break out of what you've been raised in.'

"Easier said than done" she muttered to herself before placing both her hands on Padril's shoulders so that he would have to listen, and hopefully pay attention, to her. "Listen to me Padril" she said slowly and clearly. "You're a mess, what's wrong, and why are you here?" she asked. "You're rambling, not listening to anything I say, and you have no shoes."

[Stacey Amber]

((Hello again! Long time no see. -_-))

Stacey was in one of her many mindless trances. She had been once again thinking about something or another that had happened at the Auror Institute when something brought her out of her reverie.

A shout?

With a jolt, she realized that she recognized the voice. What was Padril rambling about? She turned towards the sound of his voice and saw him. He looked... Really, he looked like someone had shot him in the heart.

She hadn't seen him in two years, since the party at Jaden's, and while she no longer was 'infatuated' with him, she was still very concerned.

She followed the sound of his voice down a dark alley, instantly tense and grabbed her wand from her pocket. Standing there were two figures. Padril and ..."Hello Susie." Yet another one of her Hogwarts friends that she had lost contact with.

"Padril?"

She noticed his bleeding feet, the wild look in his eyes, the crazed expression.

"What's wrong?" She directed the last question at Susie and Padril, as the latter didn't look very fit to answer. She raised a perfectly arched eyebrow and walked closer.