Sophia Dixon (assiduously) wrote in thesocieties, @ 2010-12-04 13:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, 2023: 12/december, ch: samuel dunstan, ch: sophia dixon |
Who: Sam and Sophia.
When: Friday evening.
Where: Around Hogwarts.
What: Sam wanted to talk.
After his last comment, Sam closed his journal -- perhaps with a little more force than strictly necessary -- and extricated himself from his previously comfortable position on his bed. Parchments with his study notes scattered, fluttering as they fell to the floor into disarray. But he really couldn’t be bothered with that right now. He was sure someone would say something to him at some point, not that he’d be bothered with that either.
There were a few more important things in life. Which, for some infuriating reason, Sophia didn’t seem to understand.
It took less than a minute to enter the Common Room and only half a second to spot his girlfriend. Not that people knew or cared -- they rarely spent time together as a couple as it was.
Sophia knew Sam wasn’t going to be happy at the idea of her joining the Potions Club, he’d been unhappy enough about her picking up the Wizarding Culture Class, so she wasn’t exactly surprised when he’d said he wanted to talk. Or argue, since that was all the seemed to do lately, when they did manage to spend time together.
She got up from the chair she’d been waiting in when she saw Sam. “Hey,” she greeted him with a small smile. “How’s your day been?” Maybe she could avoid having to talk about the Potions Club thing.
“Fine,” he replied, not exactly feeling like going into detail. At least, it had started out alright and it was nice to know that the weekend was approaching. It meant that he’d have a Saturday free to lounge around and complete his homework amongst intermittent rounds of Gobstones or Chess or whatever else took his fancy. But none of this was what he felt like sharing at this exact moment. “Shall we go out for a walk?” he asked, not wanting other people privy to their conversation.
“If you want,” she answered, heading towards the exit of the common room. “And my day was good too, thanks for asking.”
Sam waited until they were outside the Common Room where there were less students to overhear their conversation. “Sorry,” he said, in reference to not asking about her day. Usually, he did. Usually, he was patient. And usually, he kept his attitude and temper in check. “I don’t really want to talk about your day, though.”
“You’re still meant to care about my day though,” she pointed out. “Or just ask out of politeness, even if you don’t really care.” That was just common courtesy wasn’t it? “What do you want to talk about then?”
Sam inhaled a deep breath and then expelled it slowly before opening his mouth to speak. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Let’s start again. How was your day?” Sometimes it felt like they were constantly starting their conversations over because they kept arguing. Even after they’d talked about the fact they were arguing and tried to argue less, it didn’t seem to be improving the situation.
“My day was good, thanks,” she replied, glad they were starting over. Arguing with Sam sucked but it just seemed to keep happening. “We’re going to go visit the orphanage for Honour Society so that should be interesting. We got out permission slips for it today so now I just need to owl home and get it signed.”
“Good for you,” he returned. Why couldn’t she just leave it at ‘good’ so they could get on with the rest of their conversation?
With that part of the conversation over, Sophia guessed it was time to let Sam talk about whatever it was that he wanted to talk about, even if she’d rather not. “So, you wanted to talk?”
“Yeah,” he began, ruminating on the words in his mind before settling on something long enough to actually say it. “I wanted to talk about this Potions Club thing. I know I can’t tell you what to do, but I’m asking you to please not join. Or even think about joining.”
It was a bit late for him to be asking her to not even think about joining, she’d wanted to join as soon as she’d seen the posters for it. She’d always loved potions and it was being run by Professor Bobbin, who was her favourite teacher (and okay, maybe she’d had a little crush on him but she was hardly about to tell her boyfriend that) so, as long as it didn’t clash with another one of her clubs, Sophia was pretty set on joining it. “Are you joining?” she asked, putting off telling him that she’d made up her mind already.
“I don’t know. Probably not. We have practice NEWTs and then there’s real deal coming up and it’s really not that far away. I’d rather focus on the stuff that matters, Soph,” he replied, turning to glance at her.
“But you like potions,” she pointed out. “And you’re good at the subject and you said you thought it sounded interesting.” They were all good reasons to join a club, in her opinion. “Clubs matter too,” she added. “They show that you’re interested in things other than just academics and that you have a varied range of skills and that you’re good at time management for balancing school work and club commitments,” she explained. “NEWTs are very important too, obviously, but it’s not like you can’t do both.”
“This isn’t about me,” Sam replied, trying to hold onto his patience. How on earth was it that she didn’t get it? “I could probably pick up an extra club if I wanted to. But I don’t. And you know why?”
“Why?” she asked, even though she could probably guess his answer. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t complained about her being over committed before.
“Because I care about you and I’m trying to spend time with you, but it’s getting ridiculous when we never have time to spend alone with each other. What’s the point of having a relationship if it’s just going to class and eating breakfast and clubs together? We might as well just be friends.” Wait. That last part hadn’t really meant to come out.
What? He couldn’t mean that! He’d always known she was going to be busy and he’d said he was okay with that and that they’d make it work. Sure, they did barely get any alone time and often they just ended up arguing but she still liked Sam and she liked being his girlfriend. “What are you trying to say?” she asked cautiously.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe it’s just not working. And maybe I don’t see the point. I think I care more about us than you do, sometimes.”
“If you care about us, shouldn’t that be the point?” she asked. “And I care about us,” she added. “I just don’t have as much time as you.”
“So why would you keep on joining more things? You already have limited time.”
Sophia was sure they’d had this conversation multiple times before. “Because I like my clubs and I like having the opportunity to join new things. I’m not going to change that just because you want me to.”
Sam fell silent for a moment. “I know. We’ve gone over this before.”
“Many times,”Sophia added.
“I’m really tired of this, Soph,” he told her as he stopped walking, pausing on a landing of a staircase as the rest of it had decided to move.
“School will be over eventually and then it’ll be better. Like how it was in the holidays,” she said, stopping as he did. “We just have to put up with this for now.”
Sam didn’t say anything. How was he supposed to say that he didn’t know if he wanted to put up with it for now?
Sophia glanced around to check there wasn’t anyone around before moving closer to him to kiss him lightly. “Sorry,” she apologised. “It wasn’t meant to be this difficult.”
He sighed. He wanted to kiss her back, he did. But more than that, he wanted for her to understand that she couldn’t just keep piling things onto her schedule and expect him to wait around for her. “Then don’t make it more difficult. Don’t join the club. Schedule in Sam time.”
“But I want to join it,” she said, frustrated. “And I should get to do what I want to do. Anyway, lately when I have had time for you, you’ve been off with Karen.”
“Seriously?” Sam demanded. The words were beginning to feel like deja vu, they’d done this enough times already. “We’re working on something. Anyway, it’s not like it should bother you that much. You always expect me to drop what I’m doing.”
“That’s because you have more time to start with,” she explained. She was sure she’d gone over this with him before. Not that long ago either. “Pick a time when I’m at Choir or Honour Society or Newspaper or doing my prefect rounds or at Arithmancy study group or Wizarding Culture. Not one of the few times that I’m actually free.”
“I’m not going over this again,” Sam said, deciding that he was getting more and more tired of these pointless conversations. “Are you going to join the Potions Club?”
“If it doesn’t clash with one of my other clubs then yes,” Sophia answered.
Sam stepped back. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Sophia repeated. “Okay as in that’s fine and we can stop arguing about this over and over and over again?” Because that would be a relief.
“No,” he replied. The staircase had returned, so Sam pressed on with their walk.
“Then what?” she asked, following him down the stairs.
“I don’t think I see the point of this anymore,” Sam replied, not turning around to look at her as he did so. “We’re not going anywhere, Soph.”
Sophia stopped. She didn’t really like where this conversation seemed to be going. “Okay?” she said slowly, not knowing what else to say.
He sensed that she had stopped walking, for he could not hear her light footsteps either beside him or behind him any longer. Sam paused himself, letting his fingers rest lightly on the banister and turned slightly to look up at her. He didn’t really know where to go from here. This wasn’t exactly where he’d planned the conversation to end up going, and even though he knew he was being honest, it still surprised him that he was saying any of this at all.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last, meaning it. He was sorry that things weren’t going well. And he was sorry that they didn’t see eye to eye and kept arguing. And he was sorry that they didn’t spend nearly enough time with each other and he was even sorry that he’d scheduled in activities that could have been done some other time when Sophia was free.
Sophia sighed. “Me too,” she responded. She wasn’t sorry that she did all the activities that she did, because she did enjoy them and she wasn’t sorry that becoming Head Girl took up more time, because becoming head girl was more important to her than having a boyfriend was, no matter how much she liked Sam, but she was sorry that it meant she didn’t have time to spend with him. She just needed a few extra hours in every day, that would make everything just a little bit easier.
“I don’t know that you are, Soph,” Sam interposed and looked down. “I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.”
That took Sophia by surprise. Sure, things weren’t going as well as they could be, or even going well at all if she was completely honest, but she hadn’t expected this. “You don’t know if you want to do this anymore?” she repeated, at a loss for what else to say. “This as in us?” she added for clarification.
He nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I mean.”
Okay. She was fairly certain there had been some sort of agreement when they’d started dating about her being allowed to break up with him, he wasn’t meant to be breaking up with her! She stayed silent for a moment, staring at the floor before finally looking up at him. “If that’s the case then I have stuff to do,” she said, trying to mask that she was upset.
Sam felt horrible. He’d never actually broken up with someone before -- usually it was the other way around, and after a bit of brooding on his broomstick, he navigated his way through it and came out on the other side with feathers ruffled but no worse off. And he wasn’t going to give her the ‘let’s just be friends’ speech either. In his opinion, it was a little disrespectful to the fact they’d just spent the last few months as a couple. And he wasn’t sure he was ready to just launch right back into friendship anyway. It would be awkward.
But more importantly than all of this was the fact that he’d realised that in breaking up with Sophia, he’d hurt her. He wasn’t supposed to hurt her. That was the complete opposite of what one did to someone they cared about.
“I’m really sorry,” he said again, hoping she wouldn’t hate him or anything. “I still like you. You just don’t have the time for this.”
“I know,” she replied, because she did believe that he was sorry, but that didn’t make everything okay. “But it’s like at the beginning, when I said that if I chose to break up with you when holidays ended, it wouldn’t be because I didn’t like you and you said something about that making it worse. So, you know,” she shrugged. “It’s the same sort of thing.”
He wanted to say that she could fix it by not picking up the Potions Club, but her mind was already set. And he really didn’t want to fight over it anyway. He hated conflict and engaging it made him feel so unlike himself that it bothered him and distressed him slightly. Not knowing what else to say, Sam fell silent and stared at his shoes.
If they were done talking, she really had other things that she should be doing and she didn’t really feel like spending time with Sam when he’d just broken up with her. “I guess I’ll just see you around then,” she said. “And if you’re going to continue walking, make sure you’re back by curfew, Ravenclaw can’t afford to lose any points.”
“Whatever, Sophia,” Sam retorted, rolling his eyes. Sometimes he really wondered what on earth had happened to her ability to prioritise.