au_hogwarts | The Room of Requirement

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The Room of Requirement

After arriving on the Quidditch Pitch, Dinah doesn't waste any time heading to the seventh floor, still carrying the bundle she brought back with her.

When she told Leonardo he wanted the gym, she meant a very specific gym. Ever since her second year when her mother was in St, Mungo's for the first time and all she wanted was to be with her uncle Ted, she's taken to using the Room when it looks alomst exactly like Ted Grant's gym in the East End. Except that many years of use as a training spcace for her nad her friends have given it a specialist twist. The punching bags, for example, punch back.

Elbowing her way in with the bundle in her hands, she glances around the room for Leonardo. She's not late, but she wouldn't put it past him to be early.

[OOC: Plot locked to Leonardo]

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"Well she is American. It's a well known fact that we can't be trusted."

He can prove it with SCIENCE!

Dinah snorts in contained laughter.

"As long as you admit it yourselves, I don't have to say it."

"Why lie, the truth is far too much fun," he says with a shrug.

It's the best line from one of Mike's favorite movies.

...

"Is that a quote from something?"

Dinah doesn't get exposed to much Muggle culture these days, even with a squib Uncle

"A movie called, Hook. It's one of Michaelangelo's favorites."

He pauses as he considers how best to sum up the plot.

"It's...what would happen if Peter Pan grew up and then returned to Neverland.
...

Which will mean absolutely nothing to you if you've never read Peter Pan."

It's hard to be a muggleborn sometimes.

"I read Peter Pan," Dinah says brightly. "My Dad was a muggle, and he used to read it to me, even when I could read it myself.

"He always made me clap."

Dinah's Momm said it was irresponsible, teaching her things that aren't true about fairies. Larry said she didn't get the point.

"Clapping is an important part of the story," Leo says somberly. A little too somberly for it to be in any way serious.

"Our mother was the one who did the reading. And since Peter Pan was one of Mike's favorite stories, we heard it a lot."

So much so that Shen would begin to swap out English in favor of Japanese where she could. It was one of the ways she taught Raphael the language.

"I had a friend called Peter," Dinah says, glancing towards the swords on the table. "He taught me how to use a sword, and when I did a lesson well, he always agreed to pretend I was Ja... I was James Hook."

Her voice catches, once, and she straightens. "You want to try with one of the punching bags? It won't fight back."

Leo commits Peter's name to memory, along with the fact that she spoke of her father in the past-tense. That's too much loss for any one person to handle.

"It's not the fighting back so much as the surprise. Having said that, I still prefer objects to people."

For now.
He looks around the room for a speed bag.

There are a couple of such speed bags attached to platforms on the wall by the larger bags, in the area towards which Dinah now indicates.

"Knock yourself out.

"...not lterally. I'm going to find a rack for the swords."

It's a big cupboard.

His eyes fall on the bags just as Dinah gestures to them.

"I'll try my best to remain conscious. But...I can't promise anything."
That, right there, is Leo's idea of a joke.

He walks his way towards the speed bags, but pauses to offer:

"If you need a hand, let me know."

Dinah pauses, already half in the cupboard, and looks over her shoulder at him.

"I can manage, thanks. You enjoy the work out."

With the permission to enjoy a pursuit of his own design, Leo continues towards the speed bag. Soon enough the the rhythmic sound of punching fills the room.

Dinah, meanwhile, does indeed find a sword rack that's much too big to have fitted in that cabinet. She levitates it out and against the wall while she carefully unwraps and racks up each of the swords Lucy gave her.

The last one, though, is her own. This she keeps out, holding straight in front of her as she looks down the blade.

And gives a coupe of practice thrusts as her smile grows.

Don't mind him, he's totally not being nosey.
Just punching.

Dinah's smile grows with every swing, until it's a real, happy grin again. Then she stops, thinks for a second, and enchants the dummy right back out of the cupboard, tossing it a sword from the rack.

Don't ask how it's holding it. It doesn't have any hands.

Magic has no logic.
Magic needs no logic.

Leo shifts his stance slightly, better to watch the proceedings.
She's not using a completely foreign technique, just not one he's used to employing on his own. It's interesting, and brings to mind many a swash buckling movie.

Yes, there's plenty of buckle there. But it's also highly practical. The sword's heavier than a traditional dueling sword and doesn'r broke much fancy swordwork. Dinah and the dummy have it out with strong, forceful sweeps.

It's at lest ten minutes before she manages to get under and touch its side.

Slowly the sound of the speed bag gets more and more quiet, until it stops moving all together. In fact, Leo's even left that area entirely, and has returned to his parchment and quill. He's taking notes with regards to form and function.

Later he'll ask Don about metallurgy, and how/if the metal deposits in a given area played a role in the structure of swords.

Dinah keeps at it for another round, until her sword cuts fabric and the dummy folds, dropping its own sword to the ground. She stoops to pick it up in her free hand, leaving the sweat to drip down her face.

On the way to the rack, she glances his way.

"Do you really learn like that? Through notes?"

"They help me to keep my mind organized," he says without looking up. "My hand is an extension of my body which is an extension of my mind. To keep them all sharp I must train them. Hone them."

Pause.

"Plus, I'm not a quick study, and kind of rely on repetition to learn anything."

The quick study would be Don, who's near eidetic memory is legendary back home.

He doesn't sound like any of Dinah's uncles, except maybe Ted Knight, who approaches wandmaking like a science.

"I don't get it," she admits, finally freeing her hands at the sword rack and properly wipnig her face. "I can't learn anything unless I'm on my feet actually doing it."

"Don't let the parchment fool you, I do a lot of that too. I just...alternate them. When I'm still I'm thinking about moving, and when I'm moving I'm thinking about being still."

Leo is always doing something. Even, no...especially when it looks like he's doing nothing.

"For instance." And he's back on his feet again, this time heading towards the sword rack. "I noticed that when you were attacking you used this grip and stance," he says picking up the heavy blade. "But I'm far more used to this stance." And now he holds it as one would a katana. "If I don't jot down a note about that...I'll forget about it later, and there could be something important disguised as a difference."

"I wouldn't know how to put that on parchment," Dinah says, eying the way he's standing. She looks at him for a second then picks up her own sword again, copying his stance on her second attempt.

"But if I can get my body to remember it, I'll know it."

This is why her notes were so rubbish.

"Must be nice," he says with complete sincerity.
Leo, it seems, is one of those annoyingly brilliant people who views himself as nothing but a failure because...he on occasion fails. And when he does, on the rare occasion fail, he does so in a rather spectacular fashion. Like...the time he attempted to take on an entire Dark Wizarding enclave by himself.

"My brother Michaelangelo is like that. I'm not."

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