WHO: Geoffrey Hooper and Ursula Flint. WHEN: Thursday afternoon. WHERE: Around the lake somewhere. SUMMARY: Ursula is hiding. Geoffrey attempts to be nice. It has mixed results. RATING: PG STATUS: Complete!
Geoffrey didn’t mind people. Truthfully. It was simply that the majority of the time, they seemed to mind him.
Why couldn’t things this year be simple? Why couldn’t people not behave in a way that made things worse?
He paused, hands on hips and breath fogging out in front of him as he surveyed the murky Scottish afternoon. Bitterly cold already, and it was only going to get worse. Jogging served as a respite from both the cold and the vast majority of other people in the school (and they from him, fairly enough.) He tugged off his hat, ruffled through his hair, then resumed. One more lap around the lake ought to do it.
Speaking of making things worse, the fact that there was a small Ravenclaw, bundled up against the cold with mittened hands tucked under her arms, curled up against one of the large trees that intermittently spread its branches above and around the Great Lake. She was easy to miss, even if one had been looking for her; a mess of dark hair and blank stares. Feeling sorry for herself, frankly, in a moment or an hour of indulgence that did, actually, somehow end up making her feel worse for having taken it.
Diary spread out on her lap, she was writing with padded fingers and a black feathered quill when she heard the approaching figure, recognizing the pace for a jogger and tensing, preparing for confrontation; preparing for she didn’t know what, honestly, but looking down at her book with deliberate timing to keep from having to be the first to speak, should the figure actually be looking for a conversation and not just passing by.
“Hey.” Conversation was likewise not something that Geoffrey was seeking out - the opposite, in fact. But he felt an odd sort of - solidarity, maybe? - with Ursula Flint. They’d both attempted to help people with the matter of the Dark Arts books and been slapped on the wrist for all their efforts. He stopped a yard or so from her, companionable but not invasive. “Sickle for your thoughts?”
Surprised at the voice - or at least at the familiarity of it accompanied by the lack of sinking feeling in her middle - she glanced up at the Gryffindor, half uncertain, half wary, and all curious. “Hey,” came her greeting in return; she closed her diary a moment later, despite knowing that he hadn’t come to snatch a peek at it, but looked up at him with dark almond-shaped eyes and, after a brief pause, said bluntly, “My thoughts have been getting me in trouble lately.”
“Yeah.” Geoffrey nodded, that one syllable heavy with empathy. He lowered himself into a crouch, lacing his fingers together over his knees as he gazed out over the grey waters. “Seems to be a bit of that going around.”
A more tactful person may have let the matter lie there, but Geoffrey was itching with curiosity. “You upset about the Dark Arts books?” he asked baldly.
A more cautious person, a person who may have learned from their mistakes even earlier that day, wouldn’t have answered. Would have deflected or refused on principle or at least pretended to have some caution when it came to admitting things to those she wasn’t at all sure she could trust. Especially given the behavior of those she thought she could trust.
But she answered just as bluntly, looking right into his eyes, “Yes.” And let it sit there for a moment before she went on, a little tartly but not unkindly, “Why do you ask?”
“Thought as much.” He nodded his satisfaction. Not that she was upset; he wasn’t quite that heartless, but more so that he had been right. “Bit of a stink up, wasn’t it?” he continued companionably. “You’d have thought that you suggested making everyone a pair of gloves from the skin of Muggle babies or something.”
Considering some of the things they were learning in Dark Arts, perhaps that wasn’t too much of a stretch…
“Anyway, I don’t think it was a half-bad idea,” he added. “Just… maybe it was a bit broad in scope or something, you know?”
Frankly, she had been all set to retort - on edge from the events of the past day, of the past weeks, even, there was a sharp opinion of what the judgmental half of the Gryffindor sixth years could do with their assumptions on her tongue when he came out with the fact that he didn’t think it was a bad idea-- and she stopped short.
Warily, she asked, almost as if she didn’t suspect him to be making a joke and her belief to be the punchline, she repeated, “You don’t think it was a bad idea?”
“I said as much, didn’t I?” Geoffrey rolled his eyes, but his tone didn’t have quite its usual touch of irritation. “You could have done it differently though. Maybe just warding to one or two people from each house, getting them to ask around on your behalf. Not every single person-” he all but capitalised each word “-in sixth year needs an extra book. Just enough to cover for the rest of us, you know?”
Exhaling a sigh, she shook her head and looked back down at her diary, letting the words sink in and continuing to shake her head. Weary as she was of explaining, it had been the asking an advocate that had caused the problem in the first place. Rather than say that, though, she answered with another question, voice harsh enough to show that she had little patience for what she knew would be the answer here. “Who was it that told you what an awful idea it was? Tilly or Ginny?”
“No one in particular.” Though of course, there had been those two warded entries. “I don’t know why you’re getting angry at me though. I didn’t say it was a bad idea.”
“Then how did you know there was a bit of a stink up?” Came the logical question, a challenge, but less raw and less pointed than her comment before - she’d softened, admittedly, as it wasn’t Geoffrey’s fault that she’d said the wrong thing, that people took it the wrong way, that she’d made the wrong choices. Or that she was hiding here down by the lake.
“Look.” Geoffrey shook his head dismissively, longish locks dancing around his face as best they could with his knitted hat pulled down over his ears. “I just wanted to tell you that I was sorry some people turned on you. That’s all. And if Ginevra was a bitch to you about it, she’s likely just narked that she didn’t think of it herself.” He was tempted to go on about how the youngest Weasley never met an idea she liked unless it came out of her own mouth, that he of everyone should know this, he had the misfortune of being on the same Quidditch team as her, after all. But oddly, that felt disloyal.
“I had better get going before I cool off and get cramps or something,” he added. “See you around.”
She looked up suddenly as he moved to stand, having absorbed all that with yet another guilty feeling in her middle, and even as he started to head off, she blurted out abruptly, “I’m sorry.” Then, with a fair amount of hesitance, went on, “And thank you.” There was a moment there, where she looked up at him, that she let her guard down and it was clear in dark brown eyes and hesitance that it meant something, his saying it; then she bit her bottom lip and, as if trying to give him leave to go if he wanted, glanced back at the pages in her lap.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, a tad more gruffly than he’d intended, slightly embarrassed by both the apology and the thanks. “Any of it, I mean. There will be something else for people to talk about in no time, trust me. This year, man.”
And with that, he was off, his trainers kicking up a small cloud of dirt behind him.