Noses and Hearts, Similarly Broken PV Dealla Prince Finished

Dee yawned as she stepped into the Great Hall, rubbing her eyes, then smoothing her hair back out of her face. Her last night had been too short, and sadly not for any fun reasons. Rather, studying had kept her up. Exams were approaching and fast, and despite the fact that her grades had seen a definitive downward trend this year, she was determined to achieve at least acceptable results for the exams. (Which, of course, did not mean she'd be satisfied with As. Getting an Acceptable was absolutely not acceptable, at least in most of her classes.) Her pride didn't allow for anything else.

She was a little late as per usual; there was a neverending stream of reasons why Dee would not make it to her destination in time. She hadn't bothered coming up with one today. After classes and duelling practice, her feet had carried her here on auto-pilot. Her eyes scanned the Ravenclaw table without really processing it, and she was halfway to the curly-haired girl sitting alone at the table's end before she realised what she was walking towards. She stopped, blinking; there was an empty, sinking feeling in her stomach, one that was all-too familiar, if less frequent recently. It had been a constant companion for weeks, months after winter break, whenever she'd turned to the side, laughing, a remark or joke already on her tongue, only to realise that her best friend wasn't there. For weeks, Dealla had thought she'd seen her out of the corner of her eye, only to realise it was some other curly-haired Ravenclaw, and not Aly at all. It had taken her a long while to stop expecting to see Aly in class or the Great Hall, and more than once she'd gotten to class late because she was so used to relying on Aly to wake her up on time.

This was likely just more of the same. She really was tired. Sighing, she adjusted her course, heading for a group of other friends instead, but then paused, again. It couldn't be. It couldn't; she wouldn't. Right?

Slowly, Dee turned. There was an odd pressure grabbing at her heart, not quite painful yet but nearly so. Because that... That definitely looked like Aly. It looked like her, but it couldn't be, because Aly had disappeared, with no word or explanation. Hadn't responded to any of Dee's letters, which had ranged from lighthearted inquiries over angry accusations to one scared, desperate note, begging her best friend to at least tell her she was alive. There'd been no reaction. And she wouldn't do this, wouldn't come back the same way, like no time had passed. Like she hadn't abandoned Dee as if their friendship had never mattered. But that girl, sitting at the Ravenclaw table, eating dinner as if it was any normal Thursday, that girl definitely looked like Aly.

There was a moment in which Dee wasn't sure she was breathing before she started walking again, eyes focused on what she was increasingly certain but didn't want to believe was her best friend. Former best friend? Former... what would this make them?

The distance passed in the blink of the eye, and then Dee's breath hitched in her chest, and she was blinking rapidly, because yes, that was Aly. It was. Yet, somehow, she still needed confirmation. "Aly?" Her voice came out small, cracking towards the end. Her vision blurred with what she realised with some delay were tears, how odd. She didn't mean to cry. Why would she?

A hot burn was spreading in her chest, closing up her throat, and she swallowed. Her fingers were curling into fists of their own accord, and she almost breathed a sigh of relieve as she recognised the feeling. Anger felt appropriate, and definitely better than the odd squeezing pain she'd had before. Anger she was familiar with, and anger she knew how to satisfy.

She'd barely wait for Aly to turn towards her in response, if there were words, they went ignored. She wasn't a physical person, usually, but her response was instinctive, not thought out. Her hand drew back, and with all of the strength and accuracy she possessed, Dee punched her best friend in the nose.

@Aly Salinger

@Dealla Prince

Bland. That was all Aly could think of as she shoveled mushy peas into her mouth, almost on autopilot, as though she'd been charmed to just do this one thing over and over and over again with no end in sight. She was used to the Hogwarts food being delicious, being glamorous, being better than undersalted peas; but, then again, maybe she'd just been looking forward to returning here for a good old-fashioned castle feast and exaggerated its culinary quality in her mind. Or maybe the peas were just bland today, as the rest of her life at the castle was shaping up to be.

Why did I think I could come back and have it all be ace again, just like it was before? she bemoaned, pushing a vaguely Dee-shaped lump of potato around on her plate with her fork. If she squinted just right and turned her head about eleven degrees to one side, she could almost kind of make out the curve of her (ex-?) best friend's nose right there in its center, but PoDeeto was no replacement for the real thing. Should've known nothing can ever go right anymore. My life's just ruined, that's it.

Stabbing the Dee-shaped potato with her fork, Aly brought it to her mouth and ate it. It wasn't doing her much better than the real Dee, of course, seeing as how one was on its journey to her stomach and the other had just walked into the Great Hall and was heading straight towards her with a look on her face that was somewhere between vengeful, relieved, and like she'd seen a ghost, which, Aly supposed, in a way, she sort of had. Or maybe she'd just seen one outside. Plenty of those beings round these parts.

Aly nearly dropped her fork.

Dee was here and heading right for her.

At the sight of her, Aly froze for just the smallest of moments. She'd been thinking about this very instant quite literally every day for months, honestly since she had found out that she wouldn't be returning to Hogwarts for the spring, under her mother's orders. She had even wanted to owl Dee - and... others, of course - to let them all know, to tell them she missed them and she'd try her best to come back eventually to see them, but the family owl had mysteriously vanished, leaving Aly trapped and with no way to contact the outside world. She was sure it was her mother's doing, of course. So that had just left the young teenager to lay awake in bed each night, imagining what Dee's reaction (and the reaction of everyone else for whom she cared) would be when Aly finally made her way back home.

Most of the scenarios had involved a lot of hugs, laughter, and tears.

"Aly?" Dee breathed as she got closer, within hearing range; her voice cracked a bit on the word, and Aly could already feel her own eyes growing hot with tears, just as Dee's raked her over to ensure that she was real and no hallucination, appearing to mist over, too. Merlin, she'd waited so long to be back, and now that she was finally here, everything was going exactly how she'd dreamed. Even if it had taken a bit of a slow start at first.

She managed just in time to stand and reach her arms out for a hug, her own voice starting out raspy from a bit of disuse. The Ravenclaw had barely spoken at all today - not to herself in the mirror getting ready that morning, not to her mother or Becca while leaving the house, and not to anyone on the way, either.

"Dee," she managed, clearing her throat quickly. "Dee. Blimey, you've no idea how much I missed-"

Then Dee's fist crashed forward out of nowhere, and Aly only had enough time to zero in on the incoming object and register that something was coming her way, though not exactly what, before Dealla Prince - former Prefect of Ravenclaw, journalist, star duellist, and Aly's best friend in the whole wide world - punched Alyssa Salinger directly in the nose.

Taken by surprise and knocked mostly off-balance by the sudden smack, Aly stumbled backwards, bumping into the edge of the bench seat behind her and almost falling onto it before managing to regain (most of) her composure. Her hands flew instantly to her nose, which had begun to smart painfully and felt unnaturally warm for some reason; the hot, thick, wet sensation around the openings of her nostrils a moment later solved that question for her.

Keeping one hand on her nose, Aly flung the other arm out - not to get a hug from Dee, as she'd wanted before, but more to keep her at arm's length, so that more hits could not be thrown. "Bloody hell, Dee!" she explained, coughing as she tried to keep the blood from dripping down her philtrum. The last thing she needed was that in her mouth right about now. "I - I guess I sort of deserved that, but what the hell'd you do that for?"

Muggle television had thankfully provided Dee with the information that you should keep your thumb outside your fist when punching someone in the face. Muggle television had sadly not warned her how much it would hurt to do so, even without breaking your thumb in the process. "Oh, for the love of-" Dee took a step back even as Aly stumbled back onto the bench, clutching her fist with her other hand and gritting her teeth against the pain, air escaping with a hiss. Why the hell anyone would ever choose this over simply casting spells was beyond her. Her meager strength really shouldn't have warranted this result.

She was in the process of raising her hand to inspect it when Aly's words caught her attention, and her eyes snapped back to her friend. She was bleeding from her nose, that was oddly satisfying. "Bloody hell, Dee," Dealla imitated, her tone sharp and mocking. "Bloody hell is right. What the fuck, Aly? You disappear for half a year without a single word and now you come back like what, nothing ever happened?" Her voice had grown louder and higher with every word, and she paused to suck in a sharp breath, heart beating much faster than the situation warranted. She didn't feel like she was getting enough air, something squeezing her heart to keep it from pumping the blood it should. Perhaps that was the reason she was feeling lightheaded.

"Couldn't have spared a single letter?" Her voice broke on the last word and she stopped herself before it got worse, unwilling to admit the hurt that was fuelling the anger.

Luckily, Dee was excellent at denial. It was her favourite coping mechanism, and she'd made liberal use of it this school year. She'd spent days pretending she was alright before succumbing to the effects of the hag ritual, and then weeks acting like nothing was wrong after she'd woken up from the coma while she'd been barely getting any sleep; most of her days spent in an automatic rhythm of school, meals, and nightmares. And then, when she'd finally surfaced, when her nights had started getting quieter, Aly had basically disappeared over night. Oh, she'd been present for the last few weeks before Christmas, but she hadn't really been there, and Dee had felt it.

And when break had ended and Aly hadn't returned, Dee had spent another few weeks in denial, pretending that there was just some delay; perhaps Aly was sick, perhaps she'd come to Hogwarts a bit later. She still remembered the moment she'd realised that there was no point to it anymore, that Aly wasn't coming back, and that she hadn't even bothered to tell her why. It had been a gut-wrenching feeling, not just like falling but like being pushed off a cliff, scrambling and failing to grab onto the edge. Another so-called best friend who suddenly decided she wasn't worth her attention anymore. Perhaps Dee just wasn't cut out for best friends.

Dee pressed her lips together to hide their trembling, and she looked away, up and to the left, her eyes burning. She struggled to keep her voice cool, but a trace of bitterness still slipped in. "Welcome back, I guess."

@Aly Salinger

@Dealla Prince

Aly was certainly a different person than she had been six months before, but that didn't mean that she wasn't still a healer at heart. Despite her own blood slowly oozing down to her top lip, seeing Dee shake her fist in pain made Aly's first impulse be to grab her wand and cast Reparifors. Her free hand even moved, instinctually, to where her aspenwood wand sat tucked into the deep side pocket of her black plaid trousers, before she let it dangle helplessly by her side instead.

Dee probably didn't want her help. Dee probably didn't want her at all.

This was confirmed moments later by her (ex-?) best friend's tone as she snapped her own words right back at her - mocking, sarcastic, and bordering even on cruel. But they were mostly just hurt, and Aly knew that full well - because she was hurt, too. Not like Dee was, but she'd been cut off from her friends just as they had been cut off from her; it wasn't her fault, but it wasn't her friends' faults, either, that they didn't know that. That they blamed her for everything.

I still blame myself for everything, too.

Dee's voice broke on her last whispered word, letter, and that did it for Aly; the tears that had pricked warmth in the bottom lids of both eyes finally bubbled over, spilling and racing down her freckled cheeks. Of course she could have spared a letter. Hell, she'd written a few, sitting alone in flickering candlelight in the wee hours of the morning, penning feelings by quill as droplets splashed to the parchment from above. I miss you had been scrawled across the bottom of the page, more times than Aly could count.

But these letters had not been sent. They couldn't have been. Aly had no owl of her own, the family owl hidden, no way of sending letters otherwise. It wasn't like there was some magical mailman she could hire from the prison comfort and safety of her own home. There had been nothing more Aly had wanted than to let Dee know she was okay, and to find out if Dee had even been worried about her, though now the answer was clearly yes, she had. Not that Aly had known that, either. It wasn't like she had received any post herself, past late December.

"Welcome back, I guess," Dee muttered bitterly at her, looking away and pressing her lips together.

Aly sunk back onto the table, half-leaning and half-sitting on its polished wooden surface; she could hear the murmurs of some Ravenclaw students whose attentions had been drawn to the scuffle between former best-friend fourth-years who had once upon a time been nearly attached at the hip. The rumour mill would always run; gossip had no bedtime nor conscience. It was amazing, really, how all of her energy had been sapped by a single punch and some resentful words. She was just tired, now. She just wanted everything to be okay again.

"I- I wanted to write," she spluttered out, wiping away the blood from her top lip and probably leaving a smear of red on her pale skin; she could heal herself in the mirror later, assuming she didn't get frozen out of the Booted dormitory by a certain pair of icy dark eyes later. Speaking of mirroring, she could feel the bitterness slip into her own tone: "Shite, Dee, I really did. But my mum took the owl, and- hey, you didn't write either, so let the hopping pot call the kettle black."

This was exactly what Aly had been dreading: a blowout fight immediately upon her return, and here she was, her worst fears coming true. Losing all her friends simply by returning to school. (She knew that it wasn't the returning that was causing the loss, it was the disappearing in the first place... but still, to her twisting teenage mind, emotion could rule over all else at the moment.)

She shook her head in disbelief as she pushed herself off of leaning on the table, taking a step forward and finally looking back up to meet Dee's gaze halfway. This was tough. Perhaps one of the hardest things Aly had ever had to do, save of course attending her father's funeral, seeing the beloved man who had always seemed so alive lying in a casket being anything but. But she had to get through this. She had to get her Dee back, because-

"I don't know what I'd have done without the thought of seeing all my friends again when my mum finally let me come back," she tried to explain, eyes softening as the tear tracks down her face continued to freshen every few moments. "Merlin, Dee, I wanted to come back and see you so badly. I missed you so much. And I'm sorry I didn't try harder to find a way to write, I-"

Her shoulders slumped over. Sure, she'd been cut off from contact, but that didn't meant she couldn't have found something. Perhaps she really had willingly let herself be trapped, willingly cut herself off from the outside world in an attempt to heal. And that was unforgivable.

"I'm just sorry," she breathed out, her voice raspy from the intermittent sobs. "I'm so sorry I left you."

Dee sniffed and blinked once, trying to get the burning behind her eyes to recede, before she turned back towards Aly once again. She was trying for a cool, indifferent expression, the one that said you don't matter and I'm better than you all with a single look. It was one that came easily to her when facing others, but looking at Aly, was little more than a flimsy pretense.

Her best friend looked a mess. There was fresh blood coming from her nostrils and her nose was swelling from the punch, and now there were red eyes and tears to finish the picture. The cruel parts of Dee found some satisfaction in the fact; Aly had been very careful about her appearance for the last year, and look at her now. But she was still Aly, and while Dee was not above lashing out when she was hurt, the fact that she'd hurt Aly dug a sick pit into her stomach. Of course, Dealla promptly ignored it.

That might have been a good point to make an indignant exit, live the theatricality of the moment to the fullest, but for some reason, her feet wouldn't move. So she just stood there, watching Aly, and then Aly was speaking, and Dee's anger was back. "I didn't write?" she hissed, taking a step forward. Her hands were back in fists, the pain, although not forgotten, ignored for the moment. "I wrote to you more than a dozen times! I sent you letters all through January, and then in February..." Dealla trailed off as realisation struck and she blinked, ice melting off her face as she focused on Aly. "You didn't get them?" The words came out calmer, a little lost, and she paused, unsure of how to proceed. "But that doesn't make any sense." She'd given them to school owls, and they had returned without the letters, every time.

This little revelation took all of Dee's rightful anger and left her floundering, because how could she be mad at Aly for not replying to her letters when the letters had never reached their destination? But that didn't negate the months of worrying, of hurt; that Aly had disappeared when Dee had needed her, and left her feeling... heart-broken, she supposed.

She stared for a moment longer, then slowly walked over to the bench Aly had abandoned, slumping down into it like her knees had suddenly given way. She felt tired, the anger dissipating had left her feeling empty and lost. They'd surely drawn some attention from the kids around them, but Dee didn't pay them any attention, wasn't even fully aware they were present, despite hushed tones, whispers, and furtive glances.

"I'm so sorry I left you," Aly whispered, and Dee snorted, because how much did those words really mean?

"So why did you?"

@Aly Salinger

@Dealla Prince

Taken aback by Dee's hissed outburst about the fact that she had written, Aly took a step back again, once more bumping backwards into the Ravenclaw table behind her, the progress she'd made towards maybe giving Dee a hug gone. Apparently, her own unsent letters had been unknown responses to unreceived mail.

In moments, it all fell into place in Aly's mind. The complete lack of concerned letters from anyone, anywhere. The lack of post coming to the house at all, really. The disappearance of the family owl, and with them, the owl treats from where they usually stayed hidden in the right-side lower drawer of her mum's desk in her (oft-locked, but easily broken-into) home office. She should've realised this was the case sooner - it had vaguely occurred to her, in the back of her mind, but she had never really considered it as an option, choosing instead to wallow in her own grief, in the depressed thought that none of the people she had considered her friends really cared enough about her to write and express their worry. Sadness had willingly overtaken her common sense, which Aly now used to recognise that of course people loved her. Of course people had written to her. Oh, hell... he had probably written to her more, past that first owl.

But Hesper Livingston-Salinger had almost certainly stopped Aly's mail.

How she'd done it, Aly had no idea - and, truth be told, she really had no idea if her mum really had even done that at all. It was all still a guessing game, an inference based off of the evidence laid out before her now. Maybe she'd charmed Aly's window, or intercepted any post before Aly could receive it. Maybe she'd made the entire house owl-proof, for all Aly knew. The only thing that was certain was that Aly hadn't received letters that had most definitely been sent to her, because Aly Salinger knew that Dee Prince was no liar. Not when she looked like that, with the reddening eyes, the slightly downturned purse of her lips, the tilt upwards of her chin.

I know that look.

She doesn't want to let her feelings out? Hide them from me instead? Fine. Two can play at that game.

Aly grumbled out a sigh, placing both of her hands on the table, one on either side of her so as to let her balance more easily as she pushed herself up to sit upon the surface. Seeing as how her bench spot was gone and she didn't want to sit across and have to shout across the entire width of the table, this was as close as she was going to get to the now-sitting Dee in the meantime. Plus, the blood draining from her nose was already beginning to slow and perhaps even dry a bit. Her smarting face may have been a bit broken on the sniffer side of things, but that could easily be fixed in the Hospital Wing later. Merlin knew Aly put too much thought into her looks to let her nose stay broken and crooked now. Plus, the black eyes that would come along with it? Ugh, she didn't even want to think about that.

"I can't tell you why they didn't get to me," the teenager muttered, looking down at her hands; one was now stained red with blood, but Aly didn't dare wipe it away onto her tan jacket, lest it stain. "Not because I don't want to, but 'cause I don't know. If I'd've gotten them, I'd have written back. Really hope you can trust me on that."

Of course, Aly did have dozens of letters to Dee sitting in the top drawer of her dresser up in Ravenclaw Tower, but she'd tell her about those another time. Already she was being too vulnerable, out here in public in the Great Hall, getting punched and crying and all that. They could have a right good sob-fest in the dormitories together later, if they managed to get past this. Right now, Aly just had to focus on breaking down these walls that Dee was so intent on putting up. After all, she knew her best friend. She knew how much Dee hated to feel.

Dee snorted a derisive laugh at Aly's apology, and a flush of indignance rose to the elder girl's freckled cheeks; she was being sincere, and she didn't take kindly to being laughed at after baring her own emotions. But she had to breathe in, breathe out - remind herself that Dee still didn't know. She didn't know any of it. Nobody did, except Aly and Hesper and Becca and of course her father's coworkers and maybe some of her professors. Aly had done her very best to keep that fateful late-November owl a secret, to shut everyone out in December so they'd not think to ask her lest they be pestering when she was clearly so off from the usual cheer.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

But when she tried to speak, Aly's voice caught in her throat; she couldn't force herself to say the words, try though she might. So she tried a different way instead, desperately wanting - no, needing, really - Dee to forgive her. Even though this whole damn thing wasn't Aly's fault, she had always been the one to pursue guiltlessness, and the first step towards that was forgiveness.

"I- I just- something happened," she managed, trying her hardest to not start crying again, looking down towards her feet so as not to look Dee in the eye for this, because if she did, Aly knew she'd just start sobbing. "My dad- the letter- I-"

She shook her head. It was useless.

Six months later, and Aly still couldn't say it. Perhaps she never would be able to say it, but maybe that would be okay.

Confused as Dee felt, she could still muster a little annoyance at Aly's flimsy excuse. So what if she hadn't known that Dee had written; she would have still expected Aly to get a message to her somehow. "So you didn't write because you thought I didn't?" What might have been an innocuous question was turned much less friendly by her tone. "I wrote to you for weeks even while I thought you were ignoring my letters." For a moment, the unspoken accusation hung in the air between them, but then, Dee had never been the type to leave things unspoken. "If you really wanted to, you could've found a way."

@Aly Salinger

Aly's face was turning red, if because of the tears, anger, or embarrassment, Dee couldn't tell. She was watching her friend, involuntarily, even while she pretended that she wasn't, head half turned away and fingers digging into the fabric of her clothes. When she caught herself at it, she turned away, lips thinning. She didn't want to feel bad for Aly. She wanted to stay rightfully indignant a while longer. Or at the very least, she wanted a good explanation, a proper apology, one that wasn't followed by excuses. Or perhaps some more excuses; yelling a bit more might make her feel better, too.

There was a moment of silence, and when Aly spoke again, her voice sounded strained. Dee's head turned without her volition, but her best friend was staring at the ground instead. Another short break, and Dee bit her lip to keep herself from commenting, from digging in deeper than was perhaps comfortable. If Aly was going to tell her... but she didn't. Something about her father, a letter, then a shake of her head.

Dee huffed, crossing her arms, not wanting to feel disappointed but unable to help it. You'll have to do better than that, were the first words on her tongue, but somehow, they didn't want to come out. Perhaps because Aly still wouldn't look at her; that was unusual. They were both rather direct most of the time. Perhaps because she did look pathetic, and it was very rare that Dee was better put together than Aly was. Perhaps just because... Aly was hurting. Badly. No one would describe Dee as sensitive to other's feelings, she wasn't good at it, and usually didn't care much to be. But she knew Aly well enough to read her regardless, even if she hadn't been around for half a year, and she had changed a little in the meantime.

So instead of saying the words that wanted to come out - badly - Dee turned her body, just a bit, to angle it towards Aly, and lightly touched her knee. If Aly looked up, she'd find Dee's eyes just a little softer, if still guarded; inquiring now rather than demanding. "Did something happen? Before the break. When you suddenly went robot."

@Dealla Prince

Dee's snappish words, which should have washed over Aly like a wave of disappointment in herself, instead were met with a slight, relieved pause in the ever-present churning of her stomach. She had been missed, after all. There had been no one-sided pining for her best friend, again by her side. And Dee had written her, even if none of the owls had ever arrived.

"I did write," the curly-haired brunette muttered under her breath, almost before she could even realize what she was saying; perhaps it was time to be vulnerable, after all, for if Dee could admit that she'd kept writing to someone who wasn't replying back, Aly could spill the secrets of her own, too. But quietly. The whole Ravenclaw table didn't need to know their business. "I... I didn't send them, but I wrote you. I've the letters with me, upstairs."

That wasn't much of an excuse, either, but at least it was the truth. Could Aly have found a way to send the letters, if she'd really wanted to? Yes, probably; Dee was right about that. The newly fifteen-year-old had spent a lifetime hiding things from her mum, and while she still wasn't the best at it, she probably could have schemed up some sort of plan and at least gotten a few words out to friends. But... she also hadn't entirely despised the radio silence. It had allowed her to wallow in her own grief, for a bit there. Sure, surrounding herself with the negative emotions that had plagued her since December had probably not been the smartest of ideas, but it had allowed her to at least partially come to terms with Benjamin Salinger's sudden death... to come to terms with the fact that she was the very last Salinger in the line. The only one left to bear the name.

That part still hurt, but then again, so did the rest of it, and Aly knew that wasn't going away anytime soon.

A soft brush against her knee sent a shock up Aly's leg, and she jerked it away without even thinking - a reflex. No longer used to human contact. In fact, other than Dee's fist crashing into her (still-smarting... she'd have to go to the Hospital Wing after dinner) nose a few minutes before, Aly hadn't actually been touched by another living creature (save her beloved and ever-heavier cat, Dauncey) since her father's funeral, when she'd been enveloped into the arms of strangers over and over.

Poor girl... so strong... poor girl... so loved... poor girl...

Aly's head snapped sideways to meet the sitting Dee's gaze; it had been her best friend's hand that had brushed against her knee, and guilt instantly washed over the brunette Ravenclaw for having yanked herself away. In fact, she wanted nothing more than a hug from Dee right now, though of course, she wouldn't let herself say that out loud. "Sorry - I'm sorry," she mumbled, softly. "Surprised me, that's all."

"Did something happen?" Dee continued, eyes peering upwards into Aly's. For a moment, relief sparked in the elder eagle's brain; this was the first time Dee had looked at her all evening with anything but hurt and fury in her aqua view, and she had missed seeing her friend smile, so this was the closest Aly knew she was probably going to get tonight. Hearing Dee's contagious laugh could come later. For now, she was still talking: "Before the break. When you suddenly went robot."

A gulp readied in Aly's throat, though she could not carry it to fruition no matter how hard she tried. Swallowing suddenly became about as possible as speaking, and she rooted about for the words to explain, but just like before, they were gone.

How do you tell your best friend that your father's dead?

"When I went - what?" she managed, voice rasping out, as if she were forcing herself to say the words... well, because she sort of was. "I... don't think I understand what you're saying, but if you mean December, then..." The last word barely escaped her lips, nothing more than a whisper. "Yes."

Croaked. Kicked the bucket. Passed on.

Expired. Departed. Perished.

Left this mortal coil. Bit it, bought it. Went to glory, was lost, became worm food, left, exited, exeunt, good-bye.

Died.

There were thousands of ways to say it, and she still couldn't think of saying just one. Forget telling your best friend that your father's died. How do you admit it to yourself?

Tears welled up in her eyes, though she kept Dee's gaze as they spilled over, running clear down her freckled cheeks til some picked up a pinkish tinge from the blood still decorating the lower half of her face. Crying, bleeding - the pretty Ravenclaw sure was a sight, right about now. "It's just... it's been such a bad year, Dee," Aly sobbed, a few hiccups escaping her mouth rapid-fire. The plainest way to say it was probably the best, if not the only, that she could force herself to make. "Dad d-di... died in November, and Mother t-took me out of school, and I just missed y-you so much..."

There. It was out. No going back now.

Aly's admission gave her a pause, the fact that there were letters, if unsent. But it hardly seemed the point; Aly hadn't tried to send them. Hadn't tried to reach out. Unsent letters might as well be a diary, never meant for Dee's eyes at all. But there was still something going on, clearly, something more than Aly just cutting her out of her life suddenly and for no reason, letters be damned. There had to be something. Dee wanted to believe it too badly for it not to be true.

Dee's eyebrow twitched slightly when Aly jerked away from her touch, surprised more than offended. She let her hand hover in the air for a second before dropping it, tilting her head, just a touch, a question. Of all the ways Aly had hurt her, not wanting to touch her after she'd just been punched in the nose seemed the least insult. Which didn't mean that Dee didn't still want an explanation. Deserved one, in fact.

"Robot, you know," Dealla replied, making a half-hearted attempt at mimicking one, arms bent and movements jerky. She dropped the act after two seconds. "Sorry, I forgot you're not," she waved her hands, "you know. Doesn't matter. I'll explain it some other time." Assuming the bigger issue between the two had been cleared up by the time. "Yes, December. So?"

Another pause followed, a visible struggle for Aly, while Dee did her best not to tap her foot in impatience... or punch her again. She was still mad, and the feeling of fist connecting with face had been surprisingly satisfying. Even if her hand still hurt. At least the hurt in her chest was fading as she watched Aly's face, tears welling up and spilling over. They did more to soften Dee's expression than the first part of the explanation. She pressed her lips together slightly, eyes narrowing again. It wasn't like her year had been easy.

The next part, however, suddenly turned the world to a different angle. Dee grew still, her features soft in surprise. "Oh," she breathed, then paused again, unsure of what to say. What could she say? She couldn't even imagine losing her dad. "Oh, Aly, that's terrible." She bit her lip, lifting her hand again to reach for her friend, then stopped, leaving it hanging awkwardly in the air. "I'm so sorry I didn't notice. And that you had to go through that on your own." She paused, her own eyes filling with tears again to mirror Aly's. "I missed you too. So much."

@Aly Salinger