My Name Is Enid, Actually
Tuesday, September 1st, 2015
“Percy Weasley?” Oliver Wood questioned, looking at the red-haired pre-teen sitting across from him.
“My name is Enid, actually.” She didn’t look up from her book. “She/They.”
“Oh, sorry. I thought I heard your brother call you…the other name.”
“You probably did; he was wrong. My name is Enid.”
“I’m Oliver, Oliver Wood. He/Him.”
Enid sat her book to the side—Magical Maladies: A Brief History Of Magical Illness In Great Britain by Melody Pont—and gazed at the other eleven year old. Probably eleven.
“How old are you?” They abruptly questioned.
“Uh…eleven?” Definitely a question. “I’m a first year.”
“Me too, on both fronts.”
“So…how many siblings do you have?”
“Six.”
“I have two sisters.” He informed when Enid didn’t ask. “Paige who is twenty-one and used to be a Ravenclaw, and Sophie who is one.”
“Okay.”
“What about your siblings?”
“What about them?”
“Names, ages, and houses.”
“Bill is a fourth year Gryffindor, Charlie is a third year Gryffindor, Fred and George are nine, Ron is seven, and Ginny is six.”
“Do you think you’ll be a Gryffindor too?”
“I guess. Everyone in my family always has been.”
“My mom was a gryffindor and my dad is a muggle.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Alterville It’s a half-muggle, half-magical town. Like Godric’s Hollow, but a lot less famous. I guess because no one famous like a Hogwarts founder came from there.”
Enid decided Oliver talked too much, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It sort of reminded her of Fred or Ron. Except Ron talked less the older he got.
“You’re quiet.” Oliver observed.
“Sorry.” She wasn’t sorry, but that was the appropriate response, so she gave it.
“You only told me what year your older siblings are in, not their ages.”
“Sorry.” They lied again. “Bill will be fifteen in November and Charlie will be fourteen in December.”
“Where are you from?”
“On the borders of Ottery St Catchpole. My area is magical, but the town is muggle.”
“Is it nice?”
“It’s fine. I like it because it’s a big place, lots of space between the houses, lots of privacy which is hard when you live with eight people.”
Oliver perked up at that. “How much space? Like can you play quidditch? Or is it too small? Too close to the town? We can’t because our yard is tiny and the muggles would see, so I’ve only flown a few times, but I love it anyway. I’m gonna try out for quidditch as soon as I can!”
“Yes.”
“....Yes?”
“Yes, you can play quidditch.”
“Lucky! I bet you play all the time, especially with all your siblings.”
“I’ve only flown once, actually.”
“Why?! Do your parents not let you?!”
“No, actually I think they wish I did fly more. Bill is on the Gryffindor team and Charlie is practically a shoe-in this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if my younger siblings play when they’re old enough too; they’re all quidditch crazy.”
Oliver gaped for a second before collecting himself. “You said like four sentences! That’s a whole paragraph!”
“Three sentences.”
“Still a paragraph!”
“So?”
“I wanna hear you talk more. I like your voice.”
“It’s just your typical Devon accent.”
“Not your accent, your voice.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Your voice is your voice, your accent is just…it’s just pronunciation and stuff. I don’t care how you pronounce stuff, I just like hearing you pronounce them. Because I like your voice.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Why is the sky blue?”
“It isn’t. When sunlight reaches Earth's atmosphere and is scattered in different directions by all the gasses and particles in the air, blue light is scattered more than the other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves, which is why we see a blue sky most of the time. But, the sky isn’t really blue, it’s clear, like everything.”
Oliver waved his hand dismissively. “That’s an accent answer, not a voice answer.”
“What’s a voice answer? In this context I mean. What is the voice answer to the question: why is the sky blue?”
He just grinned back. “You’re smart, right?”
“A bit simpler of an answer than my psychologist would give, but yeah. I’m smart.”
“Then figure it out.”
“What?” Enid was actually caught off guard, unconsciously pushing her back harder against her seat as a result.
“I want you to tell me what the voice answer is.”
“But, I don’t know it.”
He shrugged. “I think you can work it out.”
“Why not just tell me?” On the outside she seemed as calm as usual, but her insides were broiling. How dare he send her on some wild goose chase to find an answer to a nonsense question?! A ‘voice’ answer, honestly!
“I want to see what you think.”
“There is no answer.” They accused. “You just want to see how far you can string me along before I give up, and you get to make a fool of me.”
Oliver’s smile fell a bit at that. “I’m not. Really, I’m not. I really want to see what you come up with.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to figure out?”
“What?”
It returned again. “Why is the sky blue? Voice answer.”
“Fine.” Enid conceded. “But, I promise you will not like the consequences if you are just trying to make me look stupid.”
“Don’t like thought experiments?”
“I love them.”
“Then you’ll love this….Or come out wishing for my death; one of the two.”
“But, not humiliated.”
“Not humiliated.” Oliver confirmed, looking at her for just a little while longer as she re-began her book, then got his own, about quidditch, out.
Maybe his dad wasn’t completely off his rocker with predictions about this school year.
Interesting, indeed.