Dido was groaning with pain as she walked away from quiet grassy area where their duel had been held, rubbing her wrist and fingers where she had gripped her wand too tightly. The duel had… the duel had happened and, once again, she had managed to come to the complete conclusion that duelling wasn’t “her sport”. Her stomach tightened in response to this- she would be good at it eventually, right? Spells would get easier, less painful. Dido sighed she walked. How had she managed to blindfold herself with a spell?! Worse than that, Fawkes, her opponent, was a duelling captain. A duelling captain.
Trying to ignore the throb in her side where she had fallen, her gaze lifted from the dirt before her feet to the girl only few feet from her, walking in the same direction. Fawkes, of course, was heading back to the cabins, to the same cabin as Dido. For the third time that summer, Dido cursed her choice of cabin. What had she done to deserve so many… Well, what hadn’t she done? Again ignoring her thoughts and forcing her focus to her surroundings, she glanced back at the other girl who, probably like Dido, looked at least tired from their duel, if not a little dazed.
For a moment, Dido stopped walking and instead crouched down, placing her satchel down on the ground with a satisfying jumble as the many different objects in there hit the soft grass. Hoping she hadn’t finished all the chocolates from her trip- There were more. Many more. As Dido felt around in the bottom of the bad, fingertips brushing the hard edges of notebooks and familiar pricks of broken quills, she found a small stash of caramel chocolates in one of the bag’s inner side pockets. They had obviously been put there for her, with something like care rather than the tearful fury her mother had been displaying when she left. Dido pulled two out, unravelling the small bag which held all of the chocolates and, with a quiet, “Hey, Fawkes?”, outstretched one of the bars to Fawkes.
After quickly unwrapping her own, and placing it gently between her teeth so as to free up an extra hand, Dido heaved the heavy bag back onto her shoulder and stood, facing Fawkes. Like at the cabin, when she had first really looked at the girl, Dido was faced with an uncomfortable flash of something almost akin to pain in her stomach. The same dark hair. The same waves. The same half-curl near her shoulder that she instantly decided she had noticed before. Fortunately, Fawkes’ hair was not in that same exact perfect braid Dido had spent weeks trying to make work on her own relatively short hair. Tearing her mind from that image of the braid in front of her, Dido met the Ravenclaw’s eyes. As she did, she felt an almost identical pang in her chest, full of red hot bite that forced her to hold her breath. But… Mik- Dido hadn’t seen eyes like that before. It wasn’t the same. She wasn’t the same.
Immediately, the words came rattling out from her mouth, flowing almost uncontrollably though Dido and into the sticky summer air.
“How was your summer then? I mean- before camp.”
She took a breath.
“Do you want to sit down? For just a little bit? It’s a lovely day and I’m not sure about you but I’m tired already from that stupid duel.”
Why was she calling the duel stupid? Fawkes was a duelling captain. It would be like approaching Headmaster Lear and telling him that Hogwarts sucked. How was that going to be any help in having a nice conversation?
“If you have somewhere to get to though…”
