Collision of Worlds {Jo}

[Amelia Pace]

Running through the common room and up into the seventh year girls dorm, Amelia Pace lacked her usual stealth and collapsed into her bed. The thing was, the more time she spent down in the changing rooms, the more excuses she was going to come up with. The longer she knew Connor, the longer she spent down there, especially in the evenings. Somebody would start to notice, they had to. If anything they would notice the smile playing on her lips and after how down and out she had been since Scott’s death it was certainly a change – even for the better, it wouldn’t go unnoticed.

Thinking of Scott again made her sigh. She’d managed to go nearly the entire day without depressing herself about it, and here she was doing nothing but thinking about it, ”Wherever you are, Scott, I hope you’re okay,” she mumbled to her canopy. She had work to do. She didn’t have time to sit around moping about something she couldn’t change. Pulling out a piece of parchment, she started work on a piece of Defence Against the Dark Arts homework they had already had for a week. It was due in the next morning. Perhaps she should have started it before, especially on seeing that it should be 12 inches.

She groaned, not even Connery would let her off of this. It wasn’t like she’d set it over a full moon, she didn’t even have that excuse. Her excuse consisted of a male werewolf she was hiding in the changing rooms. One that she may have failed to tell him about when she’d told him she had decided that she wanted to start making a break from her cage. She wouldn’t have one at home for the full moon and she’d have to get used to it. Somehow the excuse had flown. It wasn’t a complete lie. Just not the total truth.

In fact, it was the truth, she just left Connor out of it.

Like she did everyday when she made excuses about where she was going and where she had been. There were only so many times she could ‘go to the library’ or ‘ask Professor Grey for help’. Hell even using her target practise excuse was getting old, and it was the one excuse she could use at any time. Stressed, happy, any time. But there was only so much ‘practise’ one could do before somebody got suspicious. Or decided they wanted to come.

[Joanna Miller]

Jo was in a bit of a flap. There was only so much one girl could handle at one time – quidditch, assignments, a social life sure. But that’s where things got complicated. She hadn’t thought much of it when Amelia started excusing herself from situations and running off who knows where. They were in seventh grade – study and work were parts of life this year and there was more work that had to go in. But surely not this much work.

She had been keeping an eye on her friend for a while now, and these disappearances were only becoming more frequent and prolonged. Something was up, and she intended to find out what.

So far she’d searched the Library after picking up a book she needed for her transfiguration parchment, and was going to check the common room before dropping off the book and searching elsewhere. There was no trace of the blond haired quidditch captain in the common rooms themselves, but when she headed up to the dorm she spotted Ame sprawled out on her bed, by the looks of it doing her homework.

She paused in the doorway, quickly devising a plan of attack. Since she had no idea how sensitive the problem was, she could hardly just demand to know straight out… could she? It was simple and effective if Ame wasn’t offended, but she risked her friend closing up and making it that much harder to help her with whatever was making her disappear like this.

“Hey,” she called, walking over and plopping herself down on her own comfy bed, dropping the book she’d collected on her trunk as she did. “I was just looking for you. I’m kinda surprised I managed to find you actually – I’ve looked for you a few times and haven’t been able to find you where you said you were. Want to tell me where you keep on disappearing to?”

Better to launch straight into it than make the situation awkward with small talk.

[Amelia Pace]

Amelia Pace was going to hell. It was official. There were only so many lies one person could tell before the devil was knocking. She wondered if it made it worse when you lied to your closest friends. Was it extended further when you lied to everybody you knew? Amelia had done exactly that. For a long time. Then laying all the truth to bear would see her having nobody left to lie to. Perhaps she could stretch the lie a bit further and cover herself for the homework she didn’t want to do. No. Connery would know.

It was Jo’s appearance that muddled her. She was questioning her on her whereabouts. What had she said? Library? Jo was carrying a book and said she’d been looking for her, she must have said the library. Or maybe Jo went to speak t a teacher about a paper? Connery? Grey? God-forbid Argall? No, it had to be the library. Work brain work! ”Uh, yeah, I couldn’t concentrate so I went down to the pitch. Worked that outta my system and now I can work,” she just prayed to God that Jo hadn’t decided to go searching for her down there, otherwise she really was for it.

In her defence, she had been at the pitch. Just not for the reasons she’d specified. Had Jo looked in the changing rooms there would be due cause for Amelia to be under serious scrutiny. Having hijacked a dinner from the Great Hall, she’d spent the next few hours half asleep on Connor’s shoulder as he ate then trying to explain the finer points of Quidditch to him. It hadn’t worked. She’d even included several detailed moving diagrams but it all seemed to flummox him. So she’d settled for cuddling into him with a loose embrace whilst they convened with their usual chatter.

It would be nice, Amelia thought, to be able to share some of the moments with her friends. But there was only so much she could tell them before it came too much. Letting them know she met him down on the pitch would just about cover them until somebody decided to notice that she took him food twice a day. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out he’d been living down there. Hell McGonagall probably already knew about him presence, but not being all that much of a threat left them too it. Something she was truly quite grateful for.

[Joanna Miller]

Ame looked distracted, really distracted. Jo couldn’t understand it – Ame was usually so much more animated than this. Or at least cheery. Now she was all tense, uptight and almost defensive. It was downright unusual – pretty much how her behavior lately could be described.

“Aww! You’d rather do homework than talk with me?” teased Jo, lowering herself onto the bed. “Come on Ame, what’s eating you? What’s so bad you can’t tell your closest friends – you know you can trust me!”

Crossing her fingers, Jo hoped this would be enough. There was always the risk she really shouldn’t be asking these questions – some things were personal, and shouldn’t be meddled in. But she needed to know Ame was alright.

“I didn’t see you out on the pitch – where were you?”

Only half a lie – she hadn’t seen anyone flying around on the pitch from the castle, and how else would anyone get rid of mental-block? Certainly nothing that you couldn’t do up at the castle. Jo’s eyes narrowed as she tried to discern Ame’s reaction, other than reluctance. Where was her bubbly friend today? All of this was most out of character.

“You aren’t sick are you? Feeling under the weather at all?”

Pausing delicately, Jo realized she was overloading Ame with questions – all out of concern, but probably not exactly appreciated.