‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧

booksmarts and broomsticks
act i , a lovelorn lockaby
chapter five , a lost fucking cause

‧ ‧ ‧ ‧ ‧

➖ THE HALLOWEEN FEAST ➖
october 1991

"SO, THE CHASERS take the waffle—"

"Quaffle." Jackie groaned, from where her head lay buried in her arms that lay against the surface of the Gryffindor table.

       The Great Hall was dressed up to the nines to celebrate the occasion of Halloween. Pumpkins floated about in the air with carvings across their front, backlit by small candles that sat within them. The enchanted ceiling showed a terrific storm that coated the Hall in flashes of lightning and the sounds of clapping thunders. The four long tables, that lined the Hall, were stocked with every form of treat you could imagine; jugs full to the brim with pumpkin juice, bowls full of seasonal pies and mashed potatoes, as well as mountains of deserts that been eyed up by the hungry first-years, who gazed upon them with chocolate still smudged around their lips.

A good month had passed since Jackie had first offered her services to Dria, and they now sat together during the Halloween feast with Tess and Penny at their sides. The Hufflepuff was massaging her temples and gritting her teeth in irritation as she marvelled at how little progress a person could make in a month.

"C'mon Jackie, I mean Quaffle? Waffle? Are they really all that different?" Dria looked on Jackie with a nonchalant shrug as she took a mouthful of shepherd's pie.

Jackie looked up to meet her friend's gaze with a clenched jaw and manic eyes as she met the blue ones of Dria, who was trying ever so hard to explain the gameplay of Quidditch, while the Hufflepuff desperately fought the urge to slap her across the face.

"Yes, Dria—!" The Hufflepuff began, nodding her head in an almost maniacal state. "You know what? I give up.

"Harry Potter has learnt to play the bloody game in less time, Dria and you can't even get the name of the ball right!" Jackie cried, slamming her hand down upon the hardwood of the table. "And he's eleven, a boy and raised by Muggles! Fucking Muggles!"

The three girls that sat by her surveyed Jackie's minor crisis with wide eyes, watching as she would make one point before flamboyantly waving her hands to proceed to the next.

"You have three advantages over him!" Jackie exclaimed, staring desperately at the blonde girl that sat opposite her, with a mortified expression on her face as many of the students sat around them began turning around in interest. "Honestly, I just have to say, I'm sorry Dria but you're a lost fucking cause."

With a large sigh, Jackie's shoulders slumped and she let out a great sigh of relief, her friends watching her with caution as a smile spread across her lips.

"Oh my God, I've been holding that in for a whole month!"

While the blonde girl opposite Jackie still looked on her with immense disturbance as the air between them all fell silent once more — and Jackie took a forkful of shepherd's pie, with a content sigh — it was Penny that first spoke out with a sharp tut leaving her lips.

"Jackie, you really need to watch your language!" She hissed in a quiet voice, looking nervously around her as many of the spectators began turning away, due to the lack of continuing action.

"Yeah, Jackie." Tess added, from behind a goblet containing pumpkin juice, "Learn to shut the fuck up."

Emitting a breathy chuckle that shook her shoulders a little, Jackie turned back to Dria — whose eyes were still wide with alarm — and gave her a sympathetic shrug.

"I'm sorry, Dria." The Irish girl sighed, with a sorry smile on her lips, wincing ever so slightly. "But this is destroying me."

Her eyes gradually becoming less and less alarmed, Dria nodded in response. In the time Jackie had been teaching her the sport, she'd found that she hated talking about it just as much Jackie hated hearing her talk about it.

"No, you're right, this is hopeless." She nodded with a slightly relieved outtake of breath, and a small smile. "I give up too."

      "I mean, you may as well, Wood's an arse."

       At Jackie's words, Dria couldn't help but give her eyes a quick roll while the two dark haired girls beside them stifled chuckles.

      "You think everyone's an arse, Jackie." Penny reminded the Hufflepuff, with a knowing look as she reached forward to refill her glass with pumpkin juice.

       "Well, especially Wood." Jackie retorted, with a light grin as she shot Dria a wink.

       "Back to being an ostrich, hurrah!" Dria proclaimed, holding up her goblet and clinking with Jackie's in a beautiful display of acquittal.

"No, no." Tess interjected, swatting at their clinking goblets. "I'm not letting my plan fall through like this."

"Tess, it was my plan—" Jackie interjected, narrowing my eyebrows as she chugged back her drink.

"Are really arguing over the ownership of a plan that is failing as we speak?" Penny asked, bringing them back to reality, as she often did, with a raised brow.

"Good point." Tess agreed, sinking back into her seat with slight deflation.

As the four girls slowly fell back into silence, Dria found herself gazing at her Ravenclaw friend, as the cogs began turning in her brain.

"Penny, you're smart." The blonde said suddenly, earning the attention of all her friends as she gazed on Penny.

"Thank you."

"What do you think?" Dria asked with an intrigued look, genuinely wondering what the only sane member of their group thought of her situation.

"I think you shouldn't give up." Penny nodded, softly, sparing the girl a sympathetic smile. "But the plan might need some work."

"What are you suggesting?" Jackie asked, with a raised eyebrow as she continued shovelling her pie into her mouth.

"Well, maybe Quidditch isn't the right path to go down." Penny suggested, with a light shrug as she looked back at Dria.

"Does Wood have any interests other than Quidditch?" The blonde asked, her eyebrows twisted in confusion as she looked between her friends, thinking hard.

"Now that is a question." Tess stated, her eyes widening as she thought, before prompting her fellow Gryffindor with a suggestion. "You could ask Amir."

"No, I couldn't." Dria scoffed, with a disbelieving laugh, and a firm shake of her head.

"Why not?" Jackie questioned, her eyebrows furrowing, and causing her forehead to crease ever so slightly.

"Anything that goes to Amir, goes to Lorcan." Dria explained, turning to Jackie for support who began to nod along after a moment, realising the hopelessness of the former suggestion. "And what goes to Lorcan, goes to Isolde—"

"And what goes to Isolde, goes to the whole fucking school." Jackie finished, earning a firm nod from the blonde across from her.

"Precisely."

"I don't like that she's stealing my thunder," Tess grimaced from beside Dria, her nostrils flaring ever so slightly. "I've established myself as the school gossip from the second I blessed this place with presence, and she has the audacity to just—"

"Tess, you are really focusing on the wrong part of the sentence." Dria cut her off, grasping her shoulder to catch her attention and bring her out of her reverie.

"Right, sorry."

"Well, who else would know?" Jackie asked, tapping her fork against the side of her plate as she pursed her lips in thought.

"What about Percy?"

Dria did all that she could to refrain from scoffing at Tess' suggestion, as a foul grimace moved onto her face.

"If you think I'm going out of my way to talk to that git—"

"No, not you!" Tess cut the blonde off, before turning to face the Ravenclaw opposite her, who was poking absentmindedly at her shepherd's pie. "Penny."

"What?"

"You have prefect duties with him, don't you?" Tess asked with an arched brow, as the Clearwater girl looked up from her food, with a look of panicked misunderstanding upon her face.

"Well, yes but—"

"Brilliant." Jackie clapped, turning to the girl at her side, "You can slip into conversation whether Wood has any other interests."

"Yes, because that's definitely a common topic of conversation between us." Penny scoffed, looking incredulously around at her friends.

"Well, what do you talk about?" Jackie pushed on, narrowing her eyes in confusion.

"Nothing." The Ravenclaw dismissed the Irish girl's query, before turning to face the blonde Gryffindor across the other side of the table. "I'll see what I can do, Dria."

"Thanks, Pen—"

"TROLL IN THE DUNGEONS!"

Before Dria could so much utter her words of thanks at her friend, a panicked cry cut through the chatter of the Great Hall accompanied by the loud bang of the doors opening in the haste with which the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher ran into the large room.

"TROLL IN THE DUNGEONS!"

The four girls looked between each other as the Hall fell into silence, every eye on the professor as he stopped in the middle of the room, even Professor Dumbledore rising to his feet in alarm.

"Thought you ought to know." Professor Quirrell all but squeaked out, before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed onto the floor.

For a few seconds, the Hall sat in silence still staring at the collapsed man in purple robes and they stomached what he'd said.

While Penny, Tess and Dria looked on with alarmed expressions and mouths agape, Jackie turned around and stifled a small laugh.

"Well, shit."

       As if on cue, while Jackie's three friends looked on her with disbelieving looks, the Hall erupted in alarmed screams and shouts. Students of all years began arising from their seats, in panicked frenzies, discarding their dinner in a heartbeat.

       "SILENCE!"

       Dria was half glad to hear the booming voice of Dumbledore cutting through the panicked cries of the students, as she remained seated looking around her at the chaos with wide eyes, stuck in a state of inertia.

      "Everyone will, please, not panic." Dumbledore stated calmly, lifting his hands to gesture peacefully, while the entirety of the school looked back at him in alarm. "Now, Prefects will lead their houses back to the dormitories. Teachers will follow me to the dungeons."

       Another flash of lightning across the enchanted ceiling caught Dria by surprise, as Tess began tugging her to her feet and the four girls joined the queueing assembly, waiting to calmly evacuate the Hall.

       "How on Earth did a troll get in?" Penny asked from the other side of the table, her voice raised ever so slightly so her friends could hear over the frenzied chatter surrounding them.

       "Maybe he heard Tess' snoring and thought it was a mating call." Dria suggested with a sincere nod, before letting out a grunt of pain as she felt Tess smack her upside the head.

       "I will smother you in your sleep."

       "Someone playing a joke." Jackie answered in all seriousness, as she craned her neck to see what the hold up was with the queue.

       "The Weasley twins?"

       "At this point, I wouldn't put it past them." Dria chuckled, with a light scoff leaving her lips as they pushed their way through the open entrance doors.

       As the students entered the larger space, they began to break up into four different directions leading away to respective house common rooms.

       "Come on, then." Tess muttered to Dria as they took a left in order to make for Gryffindor Tower, but not before sparing a glance behind them. "See you guys tomorrow!"

       "Unless you get killed by the troll!"

       "Jackie!"

***

       "YOU RECKON THEY'VE caught it yet?"

       A good hour had passed since the entirety of the school had been directed from the Great Hall and now sat in their respective common rooms.

        Dria couldn't speak for the rest of the houses, but the Gryffindor Common Room was absolutely packed with students of all ages awaiting news on the troll.

       Among those students sat Tess and Dria, who had managed to secure themselves two seat on the sofa before the roaring open log fire, as they sat peering through the pages of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, one of their school textbooks, in order to find out more about the mountain troll.

       "Can't be difficult, can it?" Tess muttered in response with a light scoff, as the two girls intently read the page of the textbook with grim expressions. "What are they? Twelve feet tall?"

       "Yep," Dria nodded, her eyebrows furrowing in slight alarm as she surveyed the drawing. "Ugly bastards, aren't they?"

        "Yeah, sort of looks a bit like George, if you tilt your head."

       "Shove off, Fred."

        Dria couldn't help but chuckle at the two voices that had entered their midst as twisting in their seats ever so slightly, Tess and Dria were met with the grinning faces of the Weasley twins, Fred and George.

        "Alright, you two?" Dria asked with a cheery smile on her lips as she closed the book in her hands and sat it down on her lap.

       "Not bad, Dria, not bad." Fred replied — or maybe it was George, she never really knew.

       "Wasn't you, was it?" The blonde asked with the ghost of a smirk, "Who let the troll in?"

       "While we are honoured you think us capable of performing such a tremendous trick—" One of the two boys began, pressing his hand dramatically to his heart.

       "Really flattering, actually." The other piped up, with a proud grin.

       "We cannot take credit for this act of genius." The former concluded, with a sad smile exchanged between him and his twin.

       "Well, that rules out all my theories."

       "You had one theory, Dria."

       "All the same." The blonde shrugged, leaning further into her seat with a raise of her eyebrows. "I suppose it will forever be a mystery."

As soon as the words left her lips, she noticed the idle chatter of the common room began to simmer down as the unmistakable creek of the portrait hole opening echoed through the air.

Sitting up straighter in her seat, Dria furrowed her eyebrows upon seeing three Gryffindor first years enter bashfully, trying their best to ignore the staring faces of their housemates as the portrait hole shut behind them.

One of them, the young girl with untameable bushy hair, she recognised to have been the same first year that had asked her and her friends whether they'd seen a troll on the Hogwarts Express, some time previously. She'd been told Michael that her name was Hermione Granger and she was the smartest girl in the entire first year.

Just behind her was a young boy with ginger hair and freckles dotted around his face, as he wore a tight lipped smile, keeping his gaze on the ground as they walked. One look up at the Weasley twins and seeing the confusion on their faces, informed Dria that the boy was their younger brother, Ron.

And behind him, a boy with jet black hair, and thin framed circular glass resting on the bridge of his nose, followed closely; Harry Potter.

Dria couldn't help but notice the state of their robes which looked tattered and smudged with some sort of chalky substance as they bustled past and walked up the separate staircases to their dormitories.

Almost as soon as they'd disappeared, the Common Room erupted in excited chatter once more as the general consensus was agreed; three first years had battled a mountain troll and lived.

"Wow, that boy is really keeping things interesting." Dria remarked to Tess, who raised her eyebrows in agreement while the twins still stood with their mouths agape.

"I mean he defeated You-Know-Who, a mountain troll must be easy work." Tess shrugged, slouching in her seat once more, now the commotion had finished.

"If you can do that much, maybe he can treat your sleep apnea, Tess—"

"When are you going to let this go?"

"When I get a good night's sleep!"

With a playful narrowing of her brown eyes at her blonde friend's comment, Tess soon shifted her attention back to the Weasley twins who had just broken out of their daze.

"Reckon he'll be in shape for Quidditch tomorrow?" The Robbins girl asked the two boys with a brow arched in curiosity.

"He better be." Fred replied — or at least Dria convinced herself it was Fred, due to the minuscule freckle he had just beneath his right eye that the other lacked.

"Wood might kill him if he isn't." George muttered in agreement, casting a look across the room with a worried expression.

Following George's gaze, Dria peered across the room only for her eyes to land on Oliver Wood. His body was hunched over a table as he tapped the tip of quill against a piece of parchment incessantly and furrowed his eyebrows in immense concentration.

"Are you guys looking forward to first match of the season, then?" Tess continued, unaware that she'd lost the attention of her blonde friend who kept casting short looks across the room.

"Yeah, can't wait to bloody up some Slytherins."

"I've been daydreaming for weeks."

Dria's delayed laughter at the comment gave her away, as the two twins noticed her distraction and followed her concerned gaze back to Wood, who was now scribbling with his quill upon the parchment.

"I think he's lost it." Fred remarked, sparing a glance at Dria, who suddenly broke out of her daze and tore her eyes away from the Gryffindor Keeper.

"What?" She asked in faux nonchalance, beginning to slump further in her seat.

"Wood." George clarified with a slight furrow of his eyebrows at the girl's change in demeanour.

"What about him?"

"He's lost it." Fred repeated, looking incredulously at the blonde before turning his eyes to the dark haired girl at his side, incredulously.

Growing tired of her friend playing dumb over the situation, Tess took it upon herself to encourage the Weasley twins to explain their insinuation.

"How do you mean?" She asked, a look of confusion passing over her face.

"He's been strategising the match since last Friday." George explained, casting another glance back at their captain.

"I'd be surprised if he's even awake tomorrow." Fred scoffed in agreement, with a light chuckle on his lips.

"I think I'm going to head up to bed."

The sudden exclamation from Dria caught all of their attention as she sat up straight in his seat, after having clearly mulled over the decision for a couple of moments.

"Alright, I'll be up in a bit." Tess nodded, tentatively, dismissing the Weasleys' questioning gaze with a subtle shake of her hand.

Dria spared her a quick smile, before getting to her feet. The topic of Quidditch was already beginning to tire her, and with the news of what happened with the troll practically confirmed by the entrance of the three first years, she decided she'd retire for the evening.

"Good luck for tomorrow, you two." She smiled at the twins, as she rose from the sofa, nodding politely at them before hastily adding. "If I don't see you before the match, that is."

"Thanks, Dria."

And with a final smile and a small sigh, the Lockaby girl set her sights on the staircase up to the girls' dormitories.

She placed one foot on the bottom step before feeling the urge to turn around once more. Her gaze landed on the figure across the room, by no surprise, who was still hunched and letting out an exasperated sigh as he let back in his chair with minor defeat.

Her gaze softened slightly at his clear distress and then something happened that she would never have foreseen; he turned around.

His coffee coloured eyes met her cool blue ones in a brief moment as he looked around for the slightest bit of solace, and he was surprised with where he found it.

Dria sent him a small smile, before bashfully turning her head away and proceeding up the stairs, trying to ignore the feeling of heat rising to her cheeks.

But she couldn't help but maintain that small smile as she went; he'd smiled back.

𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖆 𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖆𝖐𝖘!
how the hell we hit
1K i'll never know,
that's mental, thank
you guys SO MUCH

═══════════════════════════════════