She knows the Heimlich she won't choke, not Daphne (farsick) wrote in caged, @ 2013-11-25 23:06:00
Who: Regina Avery & Daphne Greengrass. What: A discussion about Student Authority developments and BOYS. Where: Château de Greengrass - aka Daphne’s bed. When: Tuesday, 19 November 1997. Evening. [BACKDATED] Status: Complete.
If the other girls had arrived back in the dorm by now, Daphne had no way of knowing. She was sitting at the head of her bed, partially reclined against propped pillows. There was a discarded book (a rather weatherbeaten copy of Fundamentals of Portuguese: Level 2) splayed on its face between her and Regina, who was situated at the foot of the bed. The curtains were drawn all round the four-poster, and a few silencing charms handily cast as they’d settled, to keep their conversation private should anyone wander in. At this hour, it was likely. For light, Daphne managed to dig a lantern out of her trunk to set up next to the book. The chapter she’d been studying when Regina came back up from rounds was interesting, but this was more so. A book would still be there later. Regina’s willingness to talk, possibly not.
Something had happened. Very recently. Regina was in a mood lately, sure. With everyone getting sick, she’d been disinfecting things all week with a vicious determination. This wasn’t that sort of stress, though. When she returned to the dorm, something about her was different, and Daphne wanted to know what it was. If Regina had let it get to her, it was nothing good.
Well, she seemed open to discussion. A good sign. And anyway, Daphne had her trapped in here, so it was either talk or stare at each other awkwardly. It would be like that awful backpacking trip two summers ago. Why did people romanticize hostels? All you got for your trouble was handsy tourists from Denmark.
“So.” Daphne looked at Regina keenly, though the effect may have been somewhat lost in the dim orange glow of the lamp. May as well cut to the chase. “What’s going on?”
It hadn’t been out of the question - or even an unattractive prospect, given the intensity and the stress of the atmosphere around them - when Daphne had caught the younger Slytherin in her dorm out in the Common Room, once again going over the common area with a mental list of what had been cleaned already today, and what areas were most highly trafficked by members of their house. In fact, given that the day had already comprised of Theodore’s infirmity (a thing she’d been worried about longer than today - setting bedclothes on fire was hardly indicative of health), questions about allegiances and the infernal Dumbledore’s Army, and rounds, it was probably best that she set aside what she had picked up as a nightly task, so as to keep more Slytherins from turning green.
So she found herself, a solid five minutes later, settled comfortably on top of the mound of pillows she’d carried over from her own bed, she and arguably the Slytherin girl she was most forthcoming with were settled across from one another, and Daphne - direct as always, a trait that the Avery could appreciate if not outright admire - cut straight to the chase. She returned the favor.
As blunt as possible - the security of the silencing charms and her trust in Daphne making her indifferently straightforward - she answered, “The Prefects were asked their opinions on who’s a part of Dumbledore’s Army. If we were unable to come up with at least three names and adequate reasoning, we were expected to give up our badges.”
“Oh.”
Daphne’s face remained fairly impassive, though her mouth tightened just a bit at the corners. That was...well, not what she’d been expecting to hear. Yet a moment later she decided it was long in coming. She was surprised to learn it had happened tonight, with nothing in particular to provoke it, but even more so that it had taken until November for the Carrows to pull such a move.
Precise terms, too. It would have been more impressive a month ago. Now that Daphne knew the Carrows had been informed about the Army and done essentially nothing with such information, long before the Press so brazenly touted their return, well. How proactive of the administration.
She sniffed and reached forward to tap her wand to the lantern, adjusting the brightness more to her liking.
“I’m surprised the Carrows showed such restraint.” Carefully, Daphne shifted against her pillows until she was lounging easily again. She was quiet for a few moments and bit her lip, watching Regina’s face. Three names. There were a lot of people that qualified. And quite a lot of those Daphne knew that Regina would gladly name and give a laundry list of reasons to back each choice. One, in particular, Daphne hoped she had opted to elide. “Who did you name?”
Still reclined comfortably to the side, her legs curled underneath her, Regina paused before answering, but when she did, her reply was in an absent and somewhat indifferent tone. “We were to exclude the obvious: Weasley, Longbottom, etcetera.” After the briefest of seconds, she went on, without much emphasis or even concern, “Abbott, Boot and Montgomery. I felt a lot of stress might be put on evidence leading them to it, so,” with a little shrug, “I held back some of my less oft-proved guesses.”
Mildly, she went on, “But the three of them hung their ropes in public; perhaps not as surely as Weasley and Longbottom, but sure enough.”
Daphne only gave that a short snort of laughter and ducked her face a fraction, ostensibly to scratch her chin. She doubted her face gave her away that easily in most cases, but it was still prudent to be careful, even amongst friends. In truth, she didn’t want any evidence of relief showing up - no, ‘Smith’ was not one of the names.
“Good,” she said brusquely, prodding the overturned journal with a toe. Stretching her arms up, Daphne began to plait her hair. “I’d think the first two are more than likely. Abbott, especially. Not as sure about Montgomery. It may simply be that she has no tact whatsoever - that’s been common enough a problem this year. I don’t know what it is that’s making them think they can say whatever’s on their minds and see no ill come of it. But, as you say, hung their own ropes.”
Head cocked to afford her a better braiding angle, Daphne looked up at Regina with mild curiosity. “Do you know who else was named?”
“Oh, Abbott, certainly,” came the response with an answering pulled face that scrunched Regina’s nose in distaste. “I don’t imagine they had any trouble recruiting her after her mother, and she’d be the sort to suggest listing me and the boys out of spite, in their rubbish newsletter.” Her mouth twisted at the memory - at the multiple memories already presenting themselves of her being thrust into the spotlight this year. If she had her way, she’d fade back into obscurity in terms of the limelight, but those days seemed quite past. Mildly, she added, “We were assured that it would only merit keeping a closer eye on whoever we listed, not immediate punishment.”
She paused briefly, letting her eyes comb over the ceiling as though considering the question, suppressed an irritable sigh, and replied, “No. Though I know from conversing with others that Abbott was listed more than once.” Then, as if by way of explanation, “We were meant to supply our answers privately to the professors.”
Daphne’s eyebrows twitched up, her utter lack of surprise at the tactic made visible. It was sensible enough, and at least played at the chance of objective responses. Silently, she ran a quick roster of who would have been included in this collusion. There was no way everyone would have been cooperative. Still far too many of these noble attempts to make an example of oneself going around. And there would have been consequences for that, as well. Daphne wondered if they’d soon be hearing of more badges being reassigned. On further thought, it was really less an ‘if’ than a ‘who.’
“That’s reasonable. I suppose,” she said mildly, finishing her plait off with the tie that was around her wrist. She tossed the loosely-woven ginger rope over her shoulder and folded her arms across her middle. “And who aside from you was doing this conversing?”
It was likely they’d not want to be named, but it was late and Daphne was bored, and it was intriguing to hear about this when it was certainly not something meant to be common knowledge. Which, naturally, meant that the rest of the school would no doubt know about it by tomorrow. Hogwarts, like any school, was good for gossip. But there was something to hearing it firsthand. Or second. She would keep asking until Regina stopped telling.
There was a strong underlying quality that seemed to run through Slytherin house, aside from those mentioned by the sorting hat on their first day - cunning and ambition aside, they all seemed to have a universal delight in gaining control over information that they shouldn’t have. It wasn’t precisely gossip, and yet sometimes it was exactly that; perhaps it was a measure of how much they envied power, each of them in their own ways and for their own reasons. For their own uses, she thought wryly to herself, thinking of bowling first years and Dark Marks. Normally, sharing information was nothing to her, particularly with Daphne.
And yet she hesitated. There was a brief moment of pause before she went on, voice uncertain but steady when she provided, “I’m not sure I should say.” Pausing again to press her lips together, glancing up at the ceiling and considering, she added, “I’m not entirely sure they were keen on telling me in the first place.” Dipping her head down again to meet Daphne’s eye, she gazed at her, well aware that she had given away her hand by refusing at all. But she supposed it was all she could do, at this point.
Well, okay then - given that reaction, a few ideas of identity were immediately nullified, and an even smaller few thrust to the fore. Daphne looked carefully back at Regina, head tilted just a fraction as she considered. She could respect Regina’s preference for reticence on the matter. Could. And yet, Daphne had no intention of sharing this with anyone else, and much preferred to have suspicions confirmed rather than left to stew in dubious territory.
Needlessly, she lowered her voice, as if she could just picture one of the other girls with an ear pressed to the outside of her bed curtains. Which would absolutely not be the case. If anything, from the outside it only looked as if Daphne had turned in early and was in no mood to even hear anyone, let alone see them.
Despite her hushed tone, the air of casual certainty with which Daphne spoke was likely a tad smug. “Ernie.”
The discussion she’d had with him just a night ago was fresh in her mind, and she hadn’t forgotten his concern for Regina. Or what had seemed like concern. She was unsure exactly what to make of it. It was unexpected. But then, Daphne had known Ernie a long time, and he was not the sort to write people off due to disagreements of values, even grave ones. He was a more likely guess than Padma, with whom she knew Regina had her own set of troubles, despite (or perhaps because of) the current situation with their siblings.
Initially, she answered Daphne’s question with a frown that spoke to just how much she disliked being transparent, even when it came to matters that weren’t her own - she did know how to lie, after all, but in some ways it still alarmed her when moments like these came up. It could be that the undertone in the other girl’s return sally didn’t help matters - but it wasn’t a reaction of anger, just unease. Her secondary response, following after a moment, was a curt nod, as though not wanting to go into much detail about it, while the truth was more akin to not having much detail to go into about it.
Except for what laid tangent to it, and that came to her after a moment - she allowed silence to hold for another moment, tense only because Regina knew she had a look on her features of being about to speak. When she did, it was with a lilting air of perplexion, like dipping a finger into a body of still water. “We appear to be friends, he and I.” Silently, she wondered at whether she’d include that in the count for their game; filed it away, dismissed it to be considered later.
“It does appear that way,” Daphne said, a little cryptically. Absently, she scratched her nails along the top of her bedspread, a stuttery sound of catching cloth punctuating the silence between the girls. Lest Regina suspect there was something else afoot, Daphne clarified. “He and I were speaking the other night. Amongst other things, he seemed concerned for your well-being. In the prefecture, at least.”
Frankly, it had seemed to Daphne that Ernie rather pitied Regina’s position. Which was something Regina was absolutely unlikely to tolerate, were the idea ever put forth. She didn’t think Ernie would care much about her divulging this to her friend - it wasn’t as if it was a secret that he was likely one of the only ones actively trying not to give Regina a difficult time.
Something thumped beyond the bed curtains, as if a book or something else of comparable heft had tumbled off someone’s end table. Daphne stared at the curtain to her right for a few moments, waiting, and returned her attention to Regina when nothing else followed.
“He wanted to know how I thought you were doing.”
Her immediate reaction was a raising of the brows, her expression somewhere between uncertain disbelief and indignance; her eyes flicked, too, to the area of the room where the noise had come from, but there wasn’t so much worry as there was curiosity there. It wasn’t terribly unusual for a pair of the girls to spend time together like giggling children at a slumber party - though perhaps that wasn’t the keenest metaphor, given the five of them.
When the noise had stilled and Daphne explained further, came Regina’s abrupt answer, nothing in it but surprise and indignance - shallow, confused emotions that veiled whatever it was she was feeling in response. “He asked you about me.” Truth be told, she wasn’t sure what she was feeling in response.
It seemed that Regina was at least somewhat annoyed, given the curtness of her response, and the way her eyebrows had leapt. No question there. And why should there be? Daphne had not misspoken. She wondered if perhaps she shouldn’t have pursued the Ernie topic at all. But then, he’d been becoming a presence in her life again rather abruptly. This was little more than another symptom of recovered connection.
“Yes.” Her answer was as simple and short as Regina’s, little more than an affirmation of something already amply established. It would have been sufficient, but she went on anyway. “I suppose it’s likely he assumed I would have better insight as your friend, given that your interactions with him seem limited to duty.”
And that Regina would never let on that she might appreciate an ally of sorts, let alone in him, even if she did. Did she? Daphne wondered now.
Now her frown had something else mingled in it - uncertainty? Confusion? At the very least, thought lines formed on her forehead, as she took in the thought that Ernie had gone to Daphne about her; her first instinct was to consider what he might gain from it, thoughts racing to whether he was seeking further information on her for malicious purposes - then to why else he might have been interested. Cared at all.
A little absently, but still with that same note of perplexion, as though treading in unknown waters, she offered by way of explanation, “I only just found out that we’re friends. He made the declaration days ago.” Corners of her mouth turned down, uncertainly. “I’m surprised his concern extended so far.”
“He ‘made the declaration’?” Daphne echoed, more than a little bemused. She tried to imagine under what circumstance this had taken place, and, truly, could easily see it taking the form of an actual, formal declaration. Ernie had his moments of pomposity. Had this declaration, perhaps, involved the signing of a contract? A handshake? A secret signal?
She realized that she was staring at Regina’s knees and swiftly remedied it by returning her focus to the state of her own fingernails.
“You shouldn’t be so surprised.” Daphne sighed, then said lightly, “He and I haven’t been close for a long time.” Ages, in fact. Or what felt like ages, when you were seventeen. People grew apart. It was the same story for anyone you asked, with at least one person. You made different friends; your interests and views shifted; rifts between priorities widened until you hardly thought of the other person at all, even if you saw them every single day across the Great Hall at meals. “But he’s always been a decent person, from what I’ve seen. Fair, you know,” she added, with a look as if to say that placing great value in fairness was such a shame. “And I think he realizes the circumstances of your appointment were shite, and that the reaction hardly alleviated the difficulty. And that you would likely find some use in a bit of support.”
No, she was not going to tell Regina that those were essentially the same words she’d said to Ernie when he’d asked for her perspective. Wouldn’t that go over well. It wasn’t a courtesy Daphne would have done many others, even if Ernie’s behavior of late had been, at times, utterly boggling and worrisome. To say nothing of the people he chose to spend most of his time with. Yet if her and Regina’s positions had been reversed, Daphne didn’t think she would appreciate the speculation about what it was she needed or wanted, and so opted to leave that bit out on this recounting.
Cautiously, she asked, “Would you rather that you were not friends? Given that it doesn’t sound as if he left you much choice in the matter?”
A patient listener, albeit with confusion still about the whole matter of being talked about in a positive way behind her back - not something she was accustomed to, actually, despite the fact that she did think of herself relatively highly - but only responded to the first bit, still absently, “Yes, he’s said much the same. That it’s difficult for others to separate Abbott losing the badge and my being granted it - that I’ve been villainized.” With a slight shrug. “He’s been very understanding. Welcoming, even.”
Then, with a little laugh bubbling up in her throat, casting her eyes downward to roll them just a little and toy with a loose thread in the bedspread, she remarked, “No, it’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting it, given that the entirety of Hufflepuff house can’t stand me.”
It occurred to Daphne that Ernie had seemed similarly concerned that Regina had been implying otherwise about his behavior. To that end, this was the first she recalled her ever being this forthcoming about anything positive to do with her appointment.
“Can’t they?” she said in mock wonderment, eyes wide. The lantern guttered, and Daphne gave it a more insistent rap with her wand. Within, the ball of warm light flared, casting a split-second’s worth of sharp shadows against the curtains, then fading back to the consistent glow of before. “Apparently not the entirety, then, is it? You’ve broken the established trend. Or he has, at any rate.”
Guard down already, again given that it was two friends - one of the best she had in the school, Regina admitted even to herself - in an enclosed and private space, she gave a little groan at the end of her mate’s answer, goodnatured but undoubtedly an expression of uncertainty and paralyzing oddness of the whole situation, and buried her face in her hands. Brown hair fell over her shoulders like curtains, loosely curled in strict opposition to the now nearly completed braid of Daphne’s, and she inhaled sharply through her fingers, mumbling, incredulously, “He’s making a list for me. Of people, Hufflepuffs, who don’t loathe me.”
After a moment of silence, her fingers spread, peering over at Daphne through them as though certain and yet uncertain what her reaction would be.
Daphne swallowed a laugh and grimaced sympathetically instead, so as not to cause any suspicion that she was disregarding the feelings of a person she valued very much. A friend who was quite literally hiding behind her own hands for a reason Daphne couldn’t hope to fathom.
“Sounds challenging,” she observed, certain that Regina hardly had any delusions about the general feeling of Hufflepuff House toward its recent and most unwelcome authority figure. If Daphne recalled correctly, badgers had a habit of eating snakes in the wild. The circumstances of Regina’s appointment had seemed little different at the time. Ernie’s list would unlikely be long.
It still remained that Regina was acting very strangely about this, in Daphne’s opinion. Their interactions were hardly as calculated as the ones they had with those outside of their general circle of friends (and in some cases within), but it was almost as if Regina couldn’t decide how she was meant to be acting. In someone else, it may not have been so peculiar.
Yet Regina Avery was one of the most decisive people Daphne knew. It seemed strange that news of someone having her well-being on his mind - something not bad, necessarily - had left her as unsettled as this. This was a Regina that she was not in the habit of interacting with, and it left her unsure of how to respond.
“I like Ernie,” Daphne finally said, almost coaxingly. After a brief pause her eyebrows knitted together and her mouth gave an odd little quirk, her gaze drifting obliquely away. Her conversation with Tracey as they’d tried to practice their Patronus charms came to mind - first kisses and first crushes. Well. She waved a hand dismissively, and her tone was dry when she added, “Not like that. Obviously. Only, he’s probably a good person to have on your side. And it sounds as if he’s a bit on yours, or might like to be.”
There were few moments in which she didn’t know how to act, to be honest: as unusual as it seemed for Daphne, it was even moreso for the Prefect herself - she’d never had someone declare themselves her friend before, much less allow interactions with anyone bewilder her to this degree. It would have been alarming if it hadn’t felt shallow; that the two of them were pushed together was of no doing of her own. It was the indecision in whether to brush it off or to cautiously consider him a friend of her own that was bemusing, both for her and the friend whose advice she sought. The friend who, to be quite honest, got on much better with the student populace in general than she herself did.
“I think he is,” came her answer, finally, after she inhaled sharply and let her hands trail up over her forehead to push her hair back. With a half exasperated, half exhausted look on her features, she said, as if closing the topic, “I suppose we’ll see if I’m right.”