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Author Topic: local long distance relationship (no. 2) — lalaland  (Read 73 times)

* Roo Hopland

    (02/05/2025 at 01:10)
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26 october 1963
hogsmeade weekend, midday


Hogsmeade wasn't the same escape for him that it was for everyone else. That fact was delicately creased into the parchment that weighed in his back pocket. His mother had folded the note once, then twice, before affixing it to the outside of a brown paper bag, his own fist creasing—crumpling—it a third and final time.

Love, the cough potion. xx

He didn't need the potion, much like he didn't need her endless hovering, yet there it had been nonetheless, waiting for him behind the till at her shop. Because of course, in a school with a perfectly capable—no, a downright sodding overqualified—Hospital Wing, she still thought he would drop dead of a lingering cough the first chance he got.

The potion, the note, the persistent insistence of her presence—all of it threaded around him like the strings of a puppet. Around his wrists. His throat—

A cough needled out of him, unexpected.

...Right.

He would take the potion, but only to quash the pathetic mewling that had plagued him since the turn of the season. Not because he was beholden to his mother in any way whatsoever. He would take the potion, and—don't forget your scarf's ready at Leclair—pick up the scarf, and whatever else he could muster the care for in the walk from Pot & Pantry to the periphery of the village.

He made it as far as around the corner.

The hand that held the brown paper bag made impact with something metallic and cold. It dislodged the bag from his grip. The potion, and the rest of his mood, shattered at his feet.

"Watch—"

"Watch where yo—"

"—watch where I'm going?"

Camera strap, yellow hair, owlish green eyes, stupid smile. This situation reminded him of everyone he knew, but none of their faces stared back at him.

"Genuine question. Are you dumb."
« Last Edit: 02/08/2025 at 22:38 by Roo Hopland »
THE FUTURE IS
THE AFTERMATH IS SECONDARY
BULLETPROOF

* Sydney Lamont

    (02/05/2025 at 03:38)
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This was Sydney Lamont.

She was sunshine in a bottle. A perpetually smiling bundle of joy who could seldom contain her own childish whims and affable nature. A being seemingly meant to spend her life perpetually laughing at the world around her, absent the cruel touch of despair that clouded many of her fellow students.

It had always separated her from her peers, the teenage student body sinking in their own drama, as she would exist in her own plane of existence amidst the unicorns and sunflowers and rainbows.

Such an existence made it impossible for many to take her seriously, even when she felt serious. Even her closest friends, her housemates or even roommates, didn't flock to her to converse about their pains and problems. How could someone like her even relate to their struggles when the universe had made her impervious to its laws?

Except, that was not the whole truth of who Sydney Lamont was. At sixteen, she could only bring up her mask as a defense to what shrouded her heart. There was only so much she could do to hide the flush of her cheeks at any given moment or the feelings of want that permeated her body like sweat after a long run. That even though she was just Sydney Lamont, destined to remain the friendly girl-next-door, there was so much happening beneath the surface waiting for the right chance and circumstance to, in her own way, remind everyone that she was very much like the rest of them; insecure, overthinking, and itchy for the touch of someone she cared for.

That touch, unfortunately, was not the one she expected when rounding the corner of Hogsmeade, her eyes fixated on the settings of her newly purchased camera, as she crashed into the body and pink hair of Roo Hopland.

The bewildered face that looked back at him, flabbergasted, was not Sydney Lamont. Her metamorphmagus ability was one she was truly beginning to master and, upon reflection of herself at a nearby clothing store, the girl had transformed herself into someone else's skin; a somebody that could finally be gawked at and hold the attention for those that might take her voice seriously for a change.

No one fit that description more than Roo, who had always brought with him a heat she could do little to extinguish. Eyes wide caught somewhere between horror and aggravation as the bag he held fell and crashed into pieces on the floor, his voice triggered a switch within her mind that she didn't need to behave as she would have expected herself to. Rather than cry and apologize profusely for getting in his way, his next words had her expression turn abrasive.

"Genuine question. Are you dumb."

"Genuine answer, yeah. Probably. No one's ever said I wasn't." That was partly true. For all her gifts, Sydney was never thought to be the brightest bulb in the bunch. Which was likely adding to her performance.

"Don't think that gives you any excuse for being a jerk, lurch. You almost broke me new camera and its worth more than anything you've got on ye." The words flowed out of her torrentially, channeling the way her system might rebuke someone. Her Irish accent filtering out of her defensively as she allowed herself to express herself without forethought, with a heavy heart, angry eyes, and an embittered soul. A response she'd never felt comfortable enough to share.

"You could say you're sorry, yeah? For not watching where you're going." She asked, going so far as to poke him with her pointer finger right in the chest. Unsurprisingly, her finger didn't make any sort of indentation, and she stared at it as if it had betrayed her.
« Last Edit: 02/05/2025 at 03:41 by Sydney Lamont »
THE CRITICS TALK OF STUBBORNNESS
but you're just passionate

* Roo Hopland

    (02/09/2025 at 04:58)
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Roo did not give girls any quarter. Never had, even as a child. And for it, he had earned a reputation—thin-skinned, unchivalrous, brute—entirely at odds with the yellow house emblazoned on his robes. But to him, girls, and others who made the same assumptions about him, were simply too stupid to see his personality for what it was: the truth.

Roo had long since realized that girls like her, girls with sharp teeth and quicker wands, didn’t need him to play lapdog the way other boys did. They weren’t looking for simpering apologies or some grand display of regret. No, they liked having someone they could punch, kick, and swear at without anyone calling them hysterical for it. Someone they could fight with instead of against.

And Roo? Roo could take a hit.

He was queuing up a reply without listening. Something dismissive. Something about how, despite not getting a word in, she had just proven herself as thick as he had suspected. Focused as he was on ending this odd interlude on his terms, on giving her no quarter, he nearly missed when she agreed. Agreed and defended her stupidity.

No snap-back, like Elspeth; no quiet fury, like Tawnie; no breath wasted on claiming she wasn’t dumb, like Charlotte. Unlike them, this blonde allowed the truth to settle between them like an uninvited guest. For once, Roo had nothing to say.

He let the small details—the ones he had ignored in his quest to flatten her ego—flow over him.

New camera strap, for it still bore the creases of how it lay in its original box. Blonde hair, not tawdry yellow, framed almond-shaped, not owlish, green eyes. She wasn't smiling at him anymore, but he was certain whatever hex with building beneath her tongue would give him more nighttime fodder than the bland smile from before.

Her nail glanced off his pectoral, and his instincts were a beat behind, shifting, tightening, the muscle underneath, as if his body already knew what his brain did not.

"Eyes up here, love." He hissed the word. Any lingering dismissiveness was fleeing him by the minute, however. "But fine. I'll give it to you: I'm sorry. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

It was not, every boy knew.

"Your turn."

Roo’s unabashed gaze dragged from her face, dipped to her chest (camera, he would deny), then, reluctantly, to the ground. He jerked his chin at his bag.
« Last Edit: 02/09/2025 at 05:00 by Roo Hopland »
THE FUTURE IS
THE AFTERMATH IS SECONDARY
BULLETPROOF

* Sydney Lamont

    (02/09/2025 at 05:38)
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At his command, undoubtable, both parts of her were forced to look up into those dumb hazel eyes as she lacked the will to do otherwise at the gruff sound of his voice. A sensation she had found impossible to shake since her first year, when he had turned to her in the Great Hall during dinner one evening and asked her to share the last powdered donut on the table.

Staring into that bright swirl, she almost blinked her own into the same shade on reflex. They were the color she'd chosen to keep, the one she saw in her reflection daily, as if changing that feature would make Roo notice her differently if he ever took the time to simply look.

"But fine. I'll give it to you: I'm sorry. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

She scoffed, "You could have been a bit nicer 'bout it."

He was looking now, much to her surprise, and Syd felt a cold chill reverberate down her spine as if a cat had slowly clawed its way off her body. She took a step back to acknowledge what he was asking her to apologize for, looking down at the darkening bag, half brown and half soggy brown, as the spilled contents of what had shattered were starting to make their way out.

"Oh, that." 

The only comfort she could offer in the moment was a shrug because there was nothing that she could do to fix it. And, considering she'd just spent all of her money on an expensive camera, there was no way she could afford to repay him for breaking whatever he was carrying. Hopefully, an apology would be enough to let bygones be bygones but, in her heart of hearts, Syd both hoped and doubted that it would settle things.

"I'm sorry," she murmured after taking a sharp inhale. The expression she offered him as she cut herself off betrayed much of the sentiment: that she was only sorry he had crashed into her and broken his crap.

"It was obviously an accident." And then, as she crossed her arms defensively, burying her feet into the ground, she made a point to draw a line on what she was willing to do as an apology.

"I'm not about to pay you for it or anything like that, considering we're both at fault. Aren't you some sort of wizard? Can't you cast a spell and make it as good as new?" Because she figured that Roo would recognize her wand if she took it out, Syd, or whoever the persona she was breathing to live was, would now be a squib.

"Not that I should know of any of your sort staying this side of the lake when Hogwarts is in season."
« Last Edit: 02/09/2025 at 05:47 by Sydney Lamont »
THE CRITICS TALK OF STUBBORNNESS
but you're just passionate

* Roo Hopland

    (02/10/2025 at 21:36)
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“Oh, that.”

Yes, that. The potion he had spent two weeks promising his exhausting mother he would pick up. The potion she was solely responsible for destroying despite her unsubtle attempts to shift the blame to the both of them (to him, really). He could see it by the look on her face: the stupid bird had dug her heels in and would not be budging. It was the thought of his wasted effort—never mind the numbness that was seeping through the toes of his right shoe—that kept the ember of his temper lit.

“Can’t you cast a spell and make it as good as new?”

“On a potion?”

He said it with derision, as he did most things, but frankly, he didn’t have a bloody clue whether he could Reparo his mother’s potions. They tended to be delicate, the ingredients evaporating in open air within seconds. Though he couldn’t have tried even if he wanted to; he didn’t have his wand on him.

“Not that I should know of any of your sort staying this side of the lake when Hogwarts is in season.”

Oh.

She wasn’t wearing robes, he finally realized. Though neither was he. He had never seen her face before. That was the more pressing fact.

A beat. A blink.

“You’re not at Hogwarts.”

And this time, Roo looked at her—really looked at her. From her hair, to the curve of her jaw, to the arms she had crossed against herself. For a lad who wandered in and out of Hogsmeade year round, having an unknown blonde—an unknown, fit blonde—scurry out from the undergrowth was akin to stumbling on a new, undiscovered species of owl.

It was his to claim.

“Next time lead with that,” he muttered, as, without further fanfare, he bent to scoop the bag. “You can’t fix a potion once it's been spilt. Most normal people would offer to replace it, but it’s fine.”

The mangled corpse of his manners hung to life in that moment. It urged him, with its dying breath, not to say what he wanted to say, which was, you a Squib? That felt too obvious. So, instead, he angled the dripping bag away from his trousers, and asked, “You from Hogsmeade?”
« Last Edit: 02/10/2025 at 22:16 by Roo Hopland »
THE FUTURE IS
THE AFTERMATH IS SECONDARY
BULLETPROOF