un esprit fort

starter for @kinesiste

Looking up from her potions book, Dawn sighed. Another essay about the love potion, something that was popular among the older students. She heard about the excessive use of it in the Gryffindor commons, which of course didn’t sit well with the Professor. Slughorn was an amazing teacher, yet let his students walk over him. He preferred to say he was allowing them room to experience the effects of magic, and that hands on learning was indeed the best way to absorb the knowledge. 

Absolutely nuts. 

when they day finally came when adrien would accept his invitation to attend hogwarts, it would be a lie to say the blond wasn’t brimming with excitement. everything about the school was just as extraordinary as he had imagined, from the starlit sky over the dining hall to first time he solved the riddle to enter the ravenclaw commons. 

and of course, there was the endless collection of books in school’s library. while adrien preferred to study in the solitude of his dormitory, he often visited the library in his spare time. too often, perhaps, for a first year student like him. it seemed like most of the usual library frequenters were upperclassmen, but he supposed that as a first year, most students would be old. 

Finally, class had ended. Not that the class was boring but Lillie was dead tired after pulling an all nighter studying for an exam she had earlier in the morning. Luckily, the day was almost over and the sky shined bright orange as she made her way through campus towards her dorm. 

The books in hand felt heavy, she knew she was just too tired and just wanted to get home and sleep for at least twelve hours. Unfortunately, she had some things to do before she could rest. 

Keep reading

adrien woke up the next morning in a nest of unfinished assignments, unfolded clothes, and energy bar wrappers. it was so early in the school year and his unhealthy habits were already starting to sink in. he supposed he should try keep his life a little more organized. remembering the previous night, a mirror to-do list didn’t sound like such a bad place to start. 

after clawing for a marker in his sea of stationary, he hobbled over to the old mirror. he only had a few things to do, so perhaps it wouldn’t be too difficult to get back on track if he completed everything in a timely- 

More zeroleon sketches!

AU where zero is a stray cat and leon takes him in. It’s really not too farfetched from canon…

The stormclouds were beginning to gather on the horizon. She was running out of time, and patience.

Lucy left the Ecruteak Pokemon Center with an exasperated sigh. Her efforts to find a trainer to escort her to the Lake of Rage during an impending thunderstorm had proven to be much more difficult than she had anticipated. With the entire morning wasted, she stubbornly resolved to go on her own, despite the danger. The rumors of a Red Gyarados sighting was impossible for her to ignore, and she was determined to catch a glimpse of it before it disappeared back into the vast depths of the lake. This was simply an opportunity she could not let pass by.

As she began to make her way out of the city she noticed a figure in front of the Burned Tower. He appeared ordinary enough, although there was something about him which caused her to pause. The years she had spent under the guidance of her mother and grandmother had given her an acute sense of auras, and there was something powerful she sensed in this particular individual, although she couldn’t quite place what it was.

Regardless, she could at least recognize that he was as good a bodyguard as any she could find.

and that’s how he found himself in the elegant city of ecruteak during his spring vacation. his willingness to pay attention in school had started to wane over the years. he was as tired and bored and ready to free himself from the confines of the kalosian education system as any of his classmates at the lumiose école d'ingénieurs, but adrien couldn’t pass up the perfect opportunity to learn now that he had been left to his own devices. 

johto was bursting with ancient historical landmarks that were right up his alley. for as long as he could remember, he’d been curious about the legendary pokemon lugia. his mother had once explained to him that the power from psychic type pokemon flows into the trainers who care for them. those who earn the trust of the psychic legendary pokemon hold the most psychic energy, and it is passed down for generations. on his mother’s side of the family, that pokemon was lugia. for that very reason, the burned tower in ecruteak city was his very first destination. the former temple was said to be home to lugia over 700 years ago according to legends, so perhaps he’d be able to pick up some clues about the pokemon’s current location from the locals. 

“would you consider escorting me to the lake of rage before the storm arrives?” spoke a voice behind him. it took him by surprise and with the energy she was giving of, it was strange he hadn’t noticed her earlier. perhaps it was because he had been focusing on the tower. there wasn’t much psychic energy left in the tower, but there was some, even on the outside. bits and pieces of it here and there. he’d have to explore the insides some other time. 

“ah, hello,” he mustered up. he’d never been too good at talking to strangers. “the lake of rage....i’m a tourist, so i’ve never been there, but...” ah, fuck. he hadn’t heard the beginning of her request. he’d have to do a bit of prodding. he tried not to do this too often, but he’d uncomfortably gotten into the bad habit of digging through people’s thoughts when he hadn’t been listening rather than just asking them to repeat what they’d said. it was invasive, he knew, and sometimes (maybe a little more than sometimes) he ended up digging a little too far. 

    But that was merely a prediction.

a question sprung into his mind, and he was surprised that it hadn’t occurred to him sooner. how did she know about him? she definitely wasn’t a student and certainly didn’t seem familiar with the area. now that he was really thinking about it, her accent did seem a bit foreign. not that an accent could really be considered a mark of suspicion in a place like lumiose city where there were surely more tourists than actual citizens. 

     It was only a matter of time before Lacuna found herself back in Lumiose. The city of light evoked memories both precious and distressing, and therefore the dancer knew that no trip inside its borders could be described as predictable. Nevertheless, the purpose behind this visit was both strange and absolute; the dancer was on the hunt for a young man in possession of a very specific talent: namely, the ability to locate her lost hairpiece.

sure, adrien likes to read classics -- the real kind. it keeps his brain sharp and his bank of outdated vocabulary expanding, he supposes. but really, he appreciates any form literature. he absorbs the the words of his textbooks from cover to cover far before the first reading assignment, and his friends call him a masochist for it.

those friends also happened to be the reason why he was reading, arceus forbid, outside that day. they were using their shared room for some activity he hadn’t bothered to catch the name of. while the library seemed like it would be the next best place to curl up with a book, it was much too loud for adrien: so many people thinking at once could be overwhelming for his senses at times.

not even one chapter into his novel did he learn that the outdoors was not an ideal place for sitting in silence either. right when the story was starting to take an interesting turn, a girl’s voice ripped him away from his fictional world. it was just a mumble, a barely audible "um.. e-excuse me," and at first he wasn’t sure she was speaking to him.

“i was wondering if you could please t-tell me what you know about a student i am looking for..”

..adrien gao, a student at this university with peculiar abilities -- that’s what she was thinking. he calls it ‘sneak peeking’: getting a taste of someone’s thoughts before they’ve finished speaking. it's rude, he knows. he tries not to do it often.

he marked his page and set down his book. she looked nervous, but not in a way that seemed suspicious. she seemed nice, and that was coming from adrien’s own personal judgement, not any fantastical psychic power he had.

^ _ ^ New print!!