Such an Ugly Word
OOC note: Reducio1) While everything written is true for Dido, much is intentionally incorrect (eg: Dido is not in Ravenclaw)
2) All God-modding of Mikaela and others gmed has been agreed prior.
4th May 2026
Stalking. It’s such an ugly word. It’s not even just ugly, it also has awful connotations of horrid things like hatred and malice and obsession.
Dido’s actions only truly stemmed from two of those.
And, to be fair to the girl, the so-called “hatred” wasn’t even directed at Mikaela.
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Dido left the Great Hall at exactly 12:21, smiling to herself after a particularly delicious lunch. To her utter delight, she had no more lessons that day and had quickly decided to go to the library to continue writing her journal. She was, admittedly, unreasonably excited to write in it, partially because it was the first time she felt as if she truly belonged in Hogwarts. The feeling was nice. Warm. Like a hug from a parent who just gets you. Or the gentle brush of a butterfly as it lands on your hand.
Dido glanced down at the blue crest on her robes. Even the sight of it filled her with its correctness, flickers of joy slipping out of her, fuelled by the royal blue. The crest was the source of her comfort, her new-found safety. From the corner of her eye, it winked at her, playfully reminding Dido of its presence. Reminding her of the simple fact: Dido Bleaklane was a Ravenclaw.
At 12:29, Dido stepped into the library. Another benefit that had come since her week away was that the library was no longer a place of dread and pain where she would force herself through books in pursuit of the exact wording for her Transfiguration essay. Instead, the library felt like a beautiful beacon of knowledge and learning and all it had taken to shift her view was the easy, simple decision to enjoy reading. While Dido hadn’t actually read a book since then, she knew that it wouldn’t be too hard. She had convinced herself that reading was no longer a hateful, painful activity. She had managed to fix herself. Or, at the very least, Dido had chosen to believe that she had fixed herself.
Settling down in an oddly comfortable chair, Dido pulled out her blue and gold journal and took a moment just to stare at it, its glistening reflective sheen enthralling the joyful twelve-year-old. A warm expression of contentment shining on her face, Dido opened the book and flipped just past her most recent entry. Imagining everything she wanted to say and picturing the images she wanted any future readers to see, Dido placed her quill down on the pages and began to scratch letters in, filling the cream emptiness with dark, navy ink in beautiful handwriting which, somewhat unfortunately, did take more time to pen in than Dido’s natural scrawl.
A little while later, Dido looked up from the now overflowing pages, clenching and un-clenching her fist as the fingers ached from the slow writing. The library seemed to have grown busier than when Dido had arrived, though she couldn’t immediately see any real change in the people present. A bit to her right, a Hufflepuff fifth year was pouring over her books, anxiously flipping through pages, assumably stressing over OWLS. On the left, a Gryffindor boy was reading what seemed to be a muggle-book as Dido recognised the dragon-filled cover. Across from Dido, sitting at one of the desk spaces, a Ravenclaw with brown hair faced away from Dido while- Was that Mikaela?
Dido blinked in slight shock, surprised to see the girl, that particular girl, in front of her. She was caught off guard but… for some reason, Dido didn’t look away. She looked at Mikaela, imagining the girl’s perfect Ravenclaw life. She imagined the friends, the discussions, the dorm rooms Mikaela had kindly described a few months earlier. It all felt so out-of-reach and yet so close, pulling her in- No, drawing her in like an inescapable net. Which, as Dido considered it, made sense. After all, she was a Ravenclaw, just like Mikaela.
Right?
Last edited by Dido Bleaklane on 21 May 2026, 23:40, edited 4 times in total.
-Dido Bleaklane |
Such an Ugly Word
OOC note: Reducio1) While everything written is true for Dido, much is intentionally incorrect (eg: Dido is not in Ravenclaw)
2) All God-modding of Mikaela and others gmed has been agreed prior.
Xth May 2026
Though it was resolutely Spring and almost Summer, Dido still wore a loose fitted grey scarf at meal-times, praying that no one would comment. This was a not-entirely rational choice of Dido’s, apparently originating from her belief that people would see her in the “wrong” house but truly coming from a sub-conscious fear that people would see the poorly sewn-on blue crest and would think that she was in the wrong house. Thankfully, no one did seem to notice, but that was probably partially helped by Dido’s constant choice to sit absolutely alone while eating at the Slytherin table, fixated on a world inside her head, the world that was mostly centred around the table only a few metres away.
As well as hosting the vast majority of Dido’s imaginings, the Ravenclaw table often included Mikaela Hendricks. This fact both was entirely unnoticed by Dido as well as entirely captivating her, fuelling her fairy-tale ideas with enough power to wreck Dido’s already confused thoughts.
Could Dido have just gone and sat at the Ravenclaw table? Probably yes. There was nothing stopping other houses from moving their places and, earlier in the year, she had even noticed some Gryffindors sitting with some of the older Slytherins. But, presumably, Dido was scared. Unknowingly, of course. In her world, there was not doubt in anyone’s mind, least of all her own, that she was anything but an eagle-sporting Ravenclaw.
This certainty was amplified through her new little crest which, to her proud eyes, looked perfectly fastened-on and realistic. If genuinely inspected, however, this shoddy job with a needle and thread was even worse than it had been when Dido first had stuck it on, the sewn crest now bent and distorted with the thread. As Dido had-
Mikaela. The girl stood up from her early breakfast. Strangely, Dido stood too. The girl left the hall quite swiftly, seemingly rushing for a lesson despite the age of time Dido had thought the students had left. Dido followed Mikaela out. She trudged behind the girl, dipping and rising with her happy gait. Dido stared as-
She had followed Mikaela into the castle, towards Transfiguration. Dido had a Herbology lesson. Yawning in tiredness from her previous night of writing, Dido rubbed her eyes and turned around, leaving Mikaela to her classes.
-Dido Bleaklane |
Such an Ugly Word
@Skylar BlueOOC note: Reducio1) While everything written is true for Dido, much is intentionally incorrect (eg: Dido is not in Ravenclaw)
2) All God-modding of Mikaela and others gmed has been agreed prior.
Xth May 2026
Dido knew things about Mikaela Hendricks.
Dido knew that she was always early, standing outside her lessons a full ten minutes before even the teacher arrived.
Dido knew that Mikaela had a friend with blue hair who seemed to be constantly smiling, acting with such invigorating energy that Dido would begin walking more bouncily whenever she followed the pair.
Dido didn’t know why the Ravenclaw would sometimes look tired or paler than usual, though she didn’t let this lack of knowledge bother her in the slightest. After all, it wasn’t like she was obsessed with Mikaela. Dido was just… interested.
And to be fair to Dido, she didn’t even truly notice that she was intentionally following Mikaela until about a week after it had begun.
It had begun like many of the days prior to it. Dido noticed the characteristically perfect braid, she stood up, she packed away her things while glancing up occasionally, and then began to walk behind her. Except, this time, Dido realised she was following Mikaela without having meant to and, instead of stopping or turning away or even catching up to the girl, kept following her. She was allowed anywhere Mikaela went- right? It wasn’t as if she were breaking any rules. She just wanted to know more about this girl who was the utter epitome of what Dido wanted to be. Of what she would be.
So, she kept walking, fiddling with her poorly sewn badge and twisting it between her fingers, completely focussed on the girl ahead. To any knowing observer, even the silent way Dido stepped, with her heel barely brushing the ground and her toes angled down to prevent the obvious clacking, would have let them know Dido’s goals but, as Dido herself didn’t noticed and Mikaela could only have seen had she turned around, in which case Dido would have stopped, the feline stalk went entirely unrecognised. To Dido, she was moving and acting normally, like any girl does as they move around a castle such as Hogwarts.
In fact, on that very first day of acknowledged following, Dido managed to go about her day pretty much as usual. She smiled to people she knew in the corridors, headed to her lessons, which fortunately were with Mikaela, and even had the gall to nod to Mikaela’s friend when she met the Ravenclaw at the end of the day. Of course, after that act of being seen, something inside Dido prevented her from continuing for the rest of the evening, though Dido still couldn’t understand why she felt that way.
At one point during the day, though Dido wasn’t exactly sure when, Mikaela stopped at the library to pour over a textbook, either studying or reading.
That was another thing Dido knew about Mikaela: that she studied a lot. Which, of course, made sense given that her Ravenclaw nature was what Dido was attempting to absorb.
Dido had sat down a couple of tables away from the girl and had pulled out her own textbooks, letting an entirely-natural-and-not-at-all-forced grin come to her face at the prospect of more reading. I like reading, Dido chastened herself. She glanced up from the monstrously large Charms textbook towards Mikaela. Dido straightened up before studying Mikaela closer, shifting her shoulders and back to mimic the Ravenclaw’s posture. She then blinked a few times before trying to see Mikaela’s eyes: did she squint while she studied? Or were they wide in admiration at the knowledge in front of her? Dido couldn’t technically tell, given how far away she was, but she quickly concluded that her eyes were wide open in love for learning.
Anything else wouldn’t have been right for Mikaela.
-Dido Bleaklane |
Such an Ugly Word
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OOC note: Reducio1) While everything written is true for Dido, much is intentionally incorrect (eg: Dido is not in Ravenclaw)
2) All God-modding of Mikaela and others gmed has been agreed prior.
TBDth June 2026
The Ravenclaw was perfect.
This was something that Dido had made herself painfully aware of. Every single minute possibly fault or flaw had been twisted into a strength. Even Mikaela’s rare moments of clumsiness which all humans must sometimes suffer had become marks of her brilliance to Dido, proving how wonderful she was with their infrequency. Dido gazed across the table and sighed as she chewed her way through a mouthful of lamb. The food choice was not only incredibly delicious and tender, melting in Dido’s mouth, but was also the perfect temperature to allow Dido to eat it slowly without it getting cold and unpleasant. It was seven fifteen and Dido was sitting alone at the Ravenclaw table, occasionally staring longingly at Mikaela with a vapid expression of want. She wanted her life. Desperately.
As it was, Dido had become more and more like Mikaela over the previous month or so. Even when her classes differed from Mikaela’s, Dido would still walk there a whole ten minutes early, anxious to mirror the Ravenclaw’s punctuality. Every day, Dido studied in the library, forcing herself to pour over the thick textbooks before her because, obviously, Dido now enjoyed reading. She had even taken to tying her relatively short hair into as similar a braid to Mikaela’s as she could though, not used to plaiting her own hair, several strands were always untucked and it looked more similar to the Quidditch player’s windswept hairstyles than Mikaela’s sensible and exact hair.
Despite this growing similarity between the two girls, Dido had begun to feel further from being Mikaela than ever. As she learnt more and more about the girl from observation, she did find more ways to match her, but also discovered ways in which she was even more dissimilar to the Ravenclaw. It was a torturous activity for Dido, “stalking” Mikaela, and yet, it was absolutely captivating.
Mikaela stood to leave. Dido stood as well, pushing off from the wooden bench before brushing herself off and lifting her bag from the floor as she did. Like clockwork, Dido walked a constant twenty feet behind Mikaela, slowing and speeding up as was necessary to maintain this measurement between them. The two girls travelled through Hogwarts’ stone corridors, framed by the intricate archways that had impressed Dido so much in those first few days in the school.
The castle’s architecture no longer inspired the same awe in Dido as it once had, though, if asked, Dido would have proclaimed how incredible it was. Instead, the stone floors were an obstacle to her still not understood goal of remaining undetected by Mikaela. Every footstep echoed around the corridors like a hundred bullets firing and Dido managed to wince at every clack of her shoes against the ground. In some parts of the school, the ground managed to soak up the noise of Dido’s tread but in that moment, wherever Mikaela was heading seemed designed to alert the castle’s inhabitants of every possible intruder. Dido wondered how after-curfew students ever managed to miss a prefect’s walk or a teacher’s march when the floors were so loud. Of course, Dido’s steps were not nearly as audible as she imagined but, to her, they still filled her with terror which Dido was still confused about the origin of.
Having spent so long following Mikaela, Dido quickly recognised where they were heading: the Ravenclaw Tower. Her heart stilled for a moment, twisting her lungs into a slight exhale of worry. Over all this time and despite her apparent conviction that she was a Ravenclaw, Dido hadn’t actually attempted to access the Ravenclaw common room, instead unhappily settling herself in her dormitory in the dungeons every night. Perhaps something in her still knew that she was wrong and was trying its very best to protect her sweet little determination to believe herself a Ravenclaw by forcing her thoughts away from the idea of the Ravenclaw common room whenever it crossed her mind.
But that miniscule, rational part of her didn’t stop her ongoing tread, nor did it convince her to finally call out to Mikaela. It had seemingly gradually weakened over the month and was now only strong enough to hint at a feeling of panic as they approached the entrance to the tower. The entrance only Ravenclaws could gain access to.
Dido swallowed as she continued walking, her throat drying up in unacknowledged nervousness. It would be ok! She was a Ravenclaw, right?
Dido Bleaklane was a Ravenclaw.
-Dido Bleaklane |