Welcome to Gaia! ::

Dominic sighed; he was slumped underneath a stray tree in the middle of Hogwarts grounds. It’s branches stretched wide and far and provided shade from the harsh sun up above, even if the chilling breeze stirred because of how quickly winter was dawning. He would have much rather been at the quidditch field, practicing, but he couldn’t, not with a bloody broken arm. Well, it wasn’t so much broken as it’d shattered from his fall during the festival, and his brother had tried to heal it because he swore up and down by his extensive knowledge as a nerd that he’d read all of mothers books. And that, ‘he’d get it right the first time for sure.’ Well, no, because his mother was forced to give him skele-grow and now he had to wait it out for the painful endeavor to ensue. For now, his arm felt like rubber and it itched and burned, that’s why his mother had set it in a cast, to keep him from scratching at his arms like a heathen and end up ripping the flesh off (he’d done it as a child once, his mother never let him forget that.) So when he sighed, it was miserably so, and it was loudly done.

Damien was with Marina, go figure (or so he supposed anyway.) Other than that, he really hadn’t much else to do with himself during the days. Grace was likely asleep, and there was nothing he could do to try and sneak in the Ravenclaw dorms no matter how hard he tried. Pft, a riddle? Might as well lock and chain the door, melt it shut, and barricade it with a dragon! He was never getting in there! Even if he could steal a pair of Ravenclaw robes because it would never occur to him that he might possibly be able to enchant his own robes with the colour change charm, never. He had a book out and open in front of him and he stared down at it lazily, wishing the words would disappear, or better yet, jump and dance on the page for him, or maybe turn into a picture of a quidditch game.

The softest, barest hum began to drift past his lips as his vision glazed over with a glossy sheen and he drifted to a world far, far away from here. Thoughts travelled to candy cane trees and streams of chocolate, Merlin, he was hungry. He blinked and glanced around, all of his belonging were strewn along in the grass beside him and after tossing his book around, he finally found his pack of sugar quills. He cracked it open and popped the strawberry quill in his mouth and then Adalaide swung down from a tree and greeted him. ”AAH!” He screamed, loud and blunt, strawberry quill fallen to his lap and eyes wide with surprise and with the smallest flicker of fear. He jumped and reached for his wand, but amidst all of the mess, his fingers accidentally grabbed a blue sugar quill and flung it forward like in his haste. ”Flipendo!” Dominic shouted, and when he realized it hadn’t worked, he finally realized who it was that had fallen in front of him. ”Ada?” He blinked, that’s when he looked down and realized what he was holding: a sugar quill.

”Well son of, no wonder that didn’t work. Dammit, Ada! What the hell! I could’a clobbered you or somethin, mate! Merlin!” He tossed a heavy sigh with relief, his casted hand over his heart to calm it down somehow (or whatever other reason the blasted impulse to do so came from.) And then chomped on the blueberry quill to calm him down, they are delicious, after all.

A second later, he paused and tossed a curious glance at Ada, his features twisted up into a bemused smile as he tried to ignore the flush of embarrassment from his charade and tried his damndest to just, ignore it.”Oh, this?” He shook his head, trying not to roll his eyes at the thought of his brother, Gabriel. ”My brother had the bright idea to try and heal me after I fell off my broom,” he paused, deciding the deeper details were unnecessary to revel in, if anything, he’d learned to compartmentalize all those horrible events and lock them away. How else could he stay so sane? Maybe that was why he panicked? ”Mum had to use skelegrow, and she wanted to make sure it set right, and…. Yeaaahhh…” Dominic paused again, deciding that, no, maybe he shouldn’t share that precious childhood memory that explained his cast.

”And anyway, what the hell are you doing up in the tree? I mean…. You nearly gave me a heart attack! Is that what this is? A ploy to get me off the quidditch team for the season, huh, Blythe? I thought you were better than that,” he smirked, obviously teasing her. It wasn’t as if he’d ever believe that she, of all people, would do that.

Exasperated, he rolled his eyes as she trolled through her laughter, and it was hard enough to fight that grin that was begging to be shown, and his own laughter that tickled at his lips until it finally slipped through (just a little bit.) Sheepishly, he squirmed in place, shifting his weight from one side to the next and curling his legs under him to try and get comfortable, or at least feel a little normal. But it was hard, his flesh was hot, and he could feel the burn in his cheeks as the blood surged and swelled his face with a cherry red color. ”Not-so-quick-on-the-draw-see-if-I-don’t-bludgeon-your-face—“ Dominic mumbled under his breath, scratching the back of his head all so very awkwardly as he tried to get used to the idea of this “humility.” It wasn’t something he was fond of.

”Five feet tall or not, you shouldn’t go sneaking up on people, tch, and especially if you thought I was Damien. He probably would’ve actually tried something, and get it right, too,” he mentioned with the shake of his head. His friend had become too paranoid lately, he’d noticed it but he turned a blind eye to it all last year. However, that quickly became an impossible feat considering the mayhem of the very first night back, and the portrait that was there to mock them. ”And anyway, you just count your lucky stars it was a quill, pssshhhh, or you woulda been done for.” He smirked triumphantly, but in reality, he didn’t want Ada to call him out on his earlier statement. If anyone would’ve noticed the oddity in his words, it would have been her, because they both knew Damien wasn’t exactly the type to ‘shoot first, and ask questions later’, but, that probably won’t last too much longer, with the way things were going.

He shrugged and snatched up his lost strawberry sugar quill, and popped it in his mouth to finish chewing it after he blew on it, to get rid of any dust or lint. It didn’t fall on the dirt! Just his pants! That doesn’t count as dirty… right?

”…..hrmm…. well,” Dominic shrugged, when he glanced back down at his cast, her impending stare made it hard to try and ignore her earlier questions. ”I couldn’t find her, it was just Gabriel…. It was at the Fall Festival, so… things were kinda… hectic.” He explained slowly, but could she blame him? It wasn’t easy starting to think that the castle, and everyone who step foot in it, was cursed in some way or another. And as much as he’d have initially wanted to retort against her ridicule, he didn’t have the heart. What did it matter, anyway? Quidditch was just a game; at least it was for everyone else. It was his life, it’s his dream, but it paled in comparison to the realities of the world. Something else sinister was brewing, someone is out to get his friends, and another someone’s tried to attack the school once, and who’s to say it won’t happen again? And again? "Y'know, you sure do ask a lot of questions for someone who totally almost coulda just been cursed to rubbish," he smirked again. Well-! Dominic had to try and reinsert his dominance somehow!

Dominic seemed taken aback, not from surprise, but hesitance. ”I dunno,” he shrugged. Vibrant blues held her gaze, if only for the moment, just to look back down at the mess he’d made. Calloused fingers tousled through leaflets of parchment scattered, some scribbled with unfinished notes and others painted black from the hurried sketches strewn about the pages, several more packets of sugar quills crinkled in their plastic as he moved through them; he didn’t know what he was looking for, other than an excuse, to not have to answer her question. He never was a good liar, not with things like these, the simple, elementary, ‘I’m sigh,’ and cough cough was simple, even the pointless white lies for chuckles and giggles, but not important things like these… He was only lucky he didn’t start bursting into random laughter, a bad habit he’d had as a child to avoid sticky situations (like that time at the church, which definitely didn’t bode over well with the priest.) He blinked; her expectant stare and fleeting last words had only barely registered in his mind. ”Huh? Oh, yeah, sure,” he was surprised as he tossed over a unopened pack to her, he could admit that. It wasn’t very often he had people actually say something as bluntly as that to his face—unless it was Grace—but his girlfriend didn’t count, did she? She could say whatever she wanted, and he would never protest it.

His eyes only darted back up once the mention of the festival struck the air with a bitter discord. ”You were the lucky ones then…” He mused quietly, eyes darting to the far left where the reflection of the sun bounced off the lakes choppy waters. Death, he hated to even hear the word. He lost a puppy as a child, and couldn’t understand why, and even now, more than ten years later, he still can’t bear to understand it. Adalaide’s own hesitance had his attention gyrate back towards her. ”She…” He blinked. Did she know? Did everyone know? The rumors were hard to ignore, from the mouth of babes to the jest of the portrait in conversation with the suit of armor—it was everywhere. ”She was there…” Dominic nodded. ”…And she was fine.” But he hadn’t been.

He contented himself in silence as he chewed on his quill, crushing the sugary sweet in his teeth. She had stuck out her tongue, and he narrowed his eyes pointedly in theatrics. If she was going to be stubborn, so could he! And that’s he cocked his head to the side and raised a curious brow on his forehead. ”Wait a minute…. Who’s Chris? Is that the person everyone says you’ve been sneaking off to go see after hours?” His small smile burst into a huge grin. ”It is, isn’t it? Awww, c’mon, you can tell me Blythe!”