Date and Time: May 17, 1998, Early Monday Evening Post Type: RP Status: Open: Public Character(s): Hestia Jones, Wayne Hopkins, Anyone else who might be around Location: Hogwarts Quidditch Pitch Summary: Hess is feeling restless, and decides to beat the hell out of a bludger for a while--draws inadvertant attention.
Once again, the length of the day of being hard at work cleaning the aftermath of an all out war left Hestia Jones unable to sit still. Where lingering in the shadowed subterranean lairs of what had been her Hogwarts home nearly a decade ago should have been physically and emotionally draining only served to wind the blue-eyed witch tighter and tighter. A spring was being wound inside of her, cranked a little more each day--its tension unreleased and growing.
It inspired thoughts of what had been, what was now, and what will probably come. Familiar faces in her brain, unrelenting like ghosts especially when she was alone... Pixie heart shaped faces with drefts of bright pink hair and a snorting laugh... A gravelly, masculine chuckle that followed it. Gone.
The lost, pained glimmer in shadowed brown eyes beneath fire red hair haunted the back of Hestia's thoughts and dreams without her even realizing it. The crank turned the wire around her heart notched one more wrung tighter, biting into a naturally cheerful, playful demeanor and pushed it to the edge of rash desires. Thoughts of retaliation for what had been taken from her and those she loved loomed like the clouds over the Pitch, just as dark with the fading sun.
Hestia could not be alone with these thoughts... but she was having a difficult time relating to a lot of those around her at the Sticks--everyone was either much younger or much older than her. She couldn't sit still... the subtle urge to break something has been becoming a little less subtle since she stopped working earlier in the evening. So... she found herself at Hogwarts again, under cover of the looming possibility of a summer storm and the dusk.
Having nabbed a Bludger from the storage house under the House towers and charmed it to continuously dart and charge her high above the grass, the former Hufflepuff beater and her bat attempted to beat out her frustrations and release the uncomfortable tensions that clawed away in her chest.
The Bludger hovered nearby, then shot straight at her forty feet above the ground astride her broom. Hess backhandedly swung at it in perfect time, connecting wood to leather with a sound of exasperation on her lips. The momentum sent both Beater and Bludger apart from each other: one hand on her broom, she wheeled around to face the charmed ball again...which took off at an angle toward an invisible Chaser. She leaned deep, and shot after it: both hands now swung the bat--poised expertly handless on her broom--and connected again.
And again...and again... Motion that never stopped, punctuated by the sounds of exertion from the Advance Guardsman's voice, tight with frustration and stress, until she was hot with light perspiration and layered slightly with dust that'd been kicked up.
Hestia didn't know if this was helping, but at the very least...as she struck and was struck.. darted and rolled and balanced on her broom, and felt the physical sting of mistake and vibration of victory... at least she wasn't thinking about it.