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booksmarts and broomsticks
act i , a lovelorn lockaby
chapter thirteen , the reign of tess robbins

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➖ PENNY CLEARWATER ➖
june 1992

       THE HOGWARTS EXPRESS let out billowing clouds of steam from its piston as it chugged along the tracks making for King's Cross station. Each compartment was filled with students who were either eagerly awaiting their return or begrudging dreading it — for Dria, it was the latter.

       The compartment containing Dria, Jackie and Penny had fallen into a quiet silence, with the exception of Figaro's loud purrs that sounded out from where he slept curled up on his owner's lap. The blonde breathed slowly with her head leaning against the window, her breath fogging up the glass as she stomached the grief that filled her at leaving school for summer.

       "I reckon we're almost there, you know." Penny said with a small smile, as she craned her neck to look out of the window from where she sat opposite Dria.

        "Ah, brilliant." The blonde muttered, absentmindedly stroking Figaro as she lifted her head from the window pane.

       "I thought you were staying with your dad for the first couple of weeks?" Jackie asked from where she sat next to Penny, her knees hugged to her chest.

       "I am." Dria answered with a small smile, crediting Jackie's point before letting out a melodramatic whine. "But I still want to go back."

       "You like school far too much." The Irish girl scoffed with a shake of her head, before casting her gaze back to the copy of Witch Weekly in her hands.

       "Oh, shut up."

Before Dria could come up with some kind of witty retort, she was distracted by the entrance of Tess, who had left the compartment some five minutes prior and had now reentered, with a large sigh leaving her lips as she plopped herself down on the seat next to Dria.

After waiting a second, and shooting a few tentative glances at Jackie and Penny, Dria cleared her throat and turned to the dark-haired girl.

"Have you done it?"

"Yep."

"How did he take it?"

"As well as can be expected." Tess tutted, slouching in her seat as she grimaced at the thought.

Five minutes earlier, Tess had left the compartment, she was sharing with her three friends, in order to find her current boyfriend, Kevin Guildhorn — a Hufflepuff in their Astronomy class, and, to put it simply, break up with him.

"So that makes your fifth break-up this year?" Penny asked the girl who groaned at hearing the number, knowing that the Ravenclaw was correct in her counting.

       "Five more victims that have suffered the reign of Tess Robbins." Dria mused, must to the distaste of the girl next to her.

"I think that's a new record for one year." Jackie smirked, before being elegantly being flipped off by the dark-haired girl opposite her.

"Shut up."

Dria chuckled at the encounter between the two girls, before her fellow Gryffindor leaned over and rested her head upon the blonde's shoulder.

"I'm very jealous of you, Dria." Tess muttered into her friend's shoulder much to her confusion.

"What do you mean?" The blonde turned her head ever so slightly to look at Tess, who was still sulking.

"You have no idea how much I would love to like someone as much as you like Wood." She explained, with a small sigh, although her words brought a sad smile to Dria's lips. "I date all these people—"

"Hundreds." Penny interjected.

"Millions, more like." Jackie corrected, her smirk still on her lips, earning an eye roll from Tess who quickly continued.

"Well, you know, I date these people hoping that once I get to know them, something will happen—I'll feel a spark or something!" She went on, lifting her head gently from Dria's shoulder as she looked around at her other friends, her face falling. "But ... nothing."

       "That's not true," Jackie scoffed, dismissing Tess' sombre words with an incredulous expression. "Don't you remember when you were absolutely obsessed with Mia Eragon?"

       "Yes, but she was a seventh year who didn't even know I existed." Tess groaned at the thought of the only girl she'd been too intimidated by to ask out.

        "Every time she spoke to us, you looked as though you'd pass out then and there." Penny added with a light chuckle, as Tess buried her face in Dria's shoulder in humiliation.

"Wasn't she with Charlie Weasley, anyway?" Jackie asked, continuing their slight change of subject matter, as she pursed her lips in thought.

"I don't think we ever figured it out." Dria chuckled in response to Jackie's question, before her attention to brought back to the Robbins girl who was still groaning into her shoulder.

Dria rested her hand sympathetically upon Tess' arm with a soft smile of compassion, as she leant her head atop of her friend's, remembering the words she'd said before their conversation had gone off on a tangent.

"Well, I don't think that liking someone so much is best thing in the world, Tess." Dria said with a small sigh, "Especially when it's unrequited. It's pretty shit, to tell the truth."

"He's an arse." Jackie cut in, her jaw squaring and earning a laugh from the blonde on the other side of the compartment.

"He's not." Dria chuckled in response, her amusement disguising disheartenment for a moment. "Trust me, it would be so much easier if he was. But he's not." The girl let out a slow sigh and she tried to smile, her gaze falling to the floor. "Getting over him is going to be a challenge."

Penny's foot gently nudged Dria's supportively as she sent her a smile, her caramel eyes meeting the blue of the blonde's.

"All in time." The Ravenclaw told her, wisely, nodding gently, before the blonde's gaze quickly darted to Jackie who mirrored Penny's expression.

Tess reached an arm across Dria's front, careful to avoid Figaro's sleeping form, and wrapped her in comforting hug, while the Lockaby leant into her embrace.

"I'm sorry your plan fell through." Dria apologised to the girl hugging her, with a sorry smile stretching across her lips.

"What? The Wood plan?" Tess asked, lifting her head up and withdrawing from the hug, settling in her own seat as she sent a glance at Jackie. "I still see it as a success."

"Absolutely." The Hufflepuff agreed, setting her magazine down on the seat beside her.

"He noticed you, didn't he?" Tess smirked in success with a proud nod, earning a chuckle from the blonde beside her.

"Thanks to none of our efforts," Dria scoffed, a wry smile creeping upon her face. "If I owe anyone it's Professor Snape."

"That was a strange turn of events, wasn't it?" Jackie chuckled, her eyes glancing at the other three girls in the compartment who soon also broke into their own laughter.

"But I suppose you're right." Dria sighed with an airy chuckle, her hand moving back to stroke the cat upon her lap. "It wasn't a failure."

A few more minutes of idle conversation passed them by before a sharp whistle sounded and the train slowly began to chug to a halt, with platform nine and three quarter materialising from behind the steam that billowed outside the train.

"Hope you're excited for Northern Ireland, Dria." Jackie grinned at the blonde, who was ushering her uncooperative cat into his carrier, as the four of them shuffled about their compartment. "You're going to love it."

"I have no doubt." Dria chuckled, speaking over Figaro's objective meows, as she closed the door to the carrier after him.

Over the summer, Jackie had invited her three friends to come and visit her in her home of Ballycastle for a week in the summer. However, Dria had been the only one to accept the offer due Tess' work commitments and Penny's family holiday to Orlando.

"Well, Eoin's just been accepted into the National team so guess who gets to go watch some Quidditch, this summer?" Jackie grinned, raising her eyebrows at her friend, excitedly.

"You're kidding."

Dria's lips curved into a small smile at Jackie's news. Her brother, Eoin, had left Hogwarts four years previously and had been scouted for the Ballycastle Bats almost the second he was out of school. Much like his sister, he played Keeper as he had on the Hufflepuff team when he was in school, it was apt that his sister took over his position on the team once he'd left.

"Nope, it's us!" The Irish girl squealed, as they fell back into their seats, waiting for the initial hustle and bustle of children, moving along the narrow corridors of the train, to subside.

"Well, I can't wait." Dria returned her smile, slightly excited by the notion of seeing a professional Quidditch match.

"I thought you hated the game?"

Dria's head turned in the direction of Tess' who sat with her bag sat on her lap as she shot the blonde an amused look at her change of attitude.

"Well, I've had someone change my mind." Dria shrugged with a fond smile settling on her lips, "And it definitely wasn't Jackie."

The four girls settled into amicable laughter at the Irish girl who simply rolled her eyes before promptly changing the subject as she turned to look between the Ravenclaw and other Gryffindor.

"Are you sure you guys can't come?" She asked with a glum expression on her lips, only to be met with shaking heads and sorry smiles.

"We can all meet when you come back over to Dria's though." Penny suggested, earning a rumble of agreement from the other girls in the compartment.

As Dria was staying a week with Jackie, she had offered her hospitality to the Hufflepuff in return. So, when the Lockaby girl came back from Ireland, Jackie would be coming back with her and staying with her until they had to catch the train again to start their sixth year.

"How does Diagon Alley sound?" Tess added with an arched brow, turning around to face her friends. "I'll try and get the day off from Florien."

"If you don't get fired first." Dria muttered as the four girls rose to their feet, having deemed the rush in the corridors to have calmed enough for them to exit, ladened with their luggage.

"Good point."

       Making their way out of the train, the girls found themselves getting swept up in the crowded platform rather quickly. They made their way to the luggage carriage to collect their belongings and found trolleys forced into their hands, with their trunks being placed upon them hastily.

       After exchanging tight hugs and multiple shouts of "love you!", the four parted their separate ways, with Dria finding her dad rather quickly, casually leaning against one of the pillars with a small grin on his face as he surveyed the bustle.

       "There you are!" Allan cried, pushing her trolley to the side so he could move around it and wrap his arms tightly around his daughter, before withdrawing and looking her over. "Have you got taller?"

       "Not since you asked me at Christmas." Dria chuckled, with a shake of her head but before their conversation could proceed another cry of "Dad!" sounded out.

       Looking in the direction of the call, Maisie appeared from within the mass of students, pushing her trolley ahead of her as a wide grin filled her lips.

        "Hello, my angel!" Their father cried, as he wrapped his arms around the younger girl in a hug, while she pushed the trolley in Dria's direction who narrowly avoided being hit by the contraption.

       However, she didn't focus too much on the annoyance of having a trolley hurled at her as she noticed the absence of her other siblings and craned her neck to look around the platform before turning to the twin of the boy in question.

       "Where's Michael?"

       "Tangled in the crowd somewhere." Maisie shrugged, casting a nonchalant glance back at the bustling crowd behind her.

       Dria nodded for a moment in mild understanding before shooting a quick glance at her father and sister.

       "We could leave him."

Maisie shot a look of mild agreement at Dria while their father chuckled at the suggestion, wrapping his arms around his two daughters.

"But then summer would be awfully dull." The dark haired man uttered with a light smile, craning his neck to look through the crowd and soon found the young boy in the crowd. "There he is!"

Dria followed her father's eyeline, watching as he lifted his hand from her shoulder to send a wave at her brother who was trudging along the platform, pushing his trolley and in idle conversation with another figure that the sight of made Dria's eyes widen.

"Who's that with him?"

"That's Oliver Wood, Dria fancies—"

"Maisie, shut your face!"

Sparing a harsh glance at her giggling sister and a nonchalant smile at her confused father, Dria broke away from his embrace and walked forward to meet the two boys half-way.

"I see you've found my delinquent of a brother, my apologies." Dria smirked, as Michael and Oliver's conversation came to a natural end, earning a humoured smile from the Gryffindor Keeper and a scowl from her little brother.

"Oi!"

"No worries." Oliver chuckled, stowing his hands in his pockets with a small shrug.

"Go and see Dad, Michael." Dria told her brother, nodding behind her in the direction of her father and sister, who were nosily watching the encounter between Dria and the boy she conversed with.

Michael left with a small grumble as he moved over to Maisie and his dad, who barely acknowledged his sudden appearance as they were still focused intently on the two teenagers just before them.

"So, I'm still good to write?" Oliver asked, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck, arching an eyebrows.

"You've got my address, still?"

"Yep."

"Then, feel free." Dria chuckled, crossing her arms over her chest, nodding and in doing so giving him permission to write to her, and replying with a small smile.

"Have a good summer, Dria."

"You too, Oliver."

And with the exchanging of a few more polite smiles, the two Gryffindors slowly backed away from one another and towards their respective families, both wearing sheepish smiles as they turned away.

Upon rejoining her family, she ignored their questioning glances and reclaimed her trolley, and beginning to move forward towards the exit to the platform with her family slowly falling into step behind her.

"Michael's been telling that was your boyfriend, Dria—"

At the sound of her father's smug tone, Dria stopped in her tracks her once tranquil mood ruined by a single statement. Her jaw hardened and she turned on her little brother, who was smiling like the devil.

"Michael, I'm going to strangle you!"

𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖆 𝖘𝖕𝖊𝖆𝖐𝖘!
and that marks the end of
act one, and if you liked
that, you are going to love
act two ;)

ALSO this chapter featured
a little allusion to the fantastic
celine's ( celineebabee )
new charlie weasley fic
dragon's blood which you
HAVE to check out x

i, for one, cannot wait for it
as i know how gorgeously
cel can craft a story, but also
because it's connected to b&b
and you might see a cameo
from our darling dria!
— yes, we're that cool

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