DISTANT GAME ━ charlie weasley

vi. the grey stallion

chapter vi the grey stallion

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THE RAVENCLAW COMMON ROOM WAS A HYPERACTIVE BURROW OF ENERGY. Even in the early hours of the day, Ravenclaw students can be seen bustling around eagerly for the following day to approach them. Whether they are hurriedly scrawling unkempt sentences along the ruffled parchment of an essay they'd left too late in advance to it's due date, or whether the topic of a strange beyond comparison dream had the need to be discussed, the Ravenclaw students engage with each other well at any time of day.

     In a time zone between breakfast and her first class's commencement, Avery Carmichael can be seen laying on her frontside in her old bed up in the Ravenclaw girls' dormitory. Where there was once a green-and-white Celtic scarf pinned up onto the wall space next to her bed and pictures of Avery and her family, the McKinnie farm (most especially their marble grey horse George) and discarded letters from her family, along with a fine collection of disorganised books and trinkets littering the desk, top of her trunk and beneath the four poster bed, there now laid an empty space. No pictures, no Celtic merchandise, no books and certainly no pictures were seen in the space Avery occupied for the last six years she'd spent in Hogwarts. Just a blank wall, notice board, desk, and the same bed, outlined in mahogany wood and decorated and blue and bronze bedsheets.

     If you saw Avery at the outset of the school year, at the beginning of her new lifestyle as Head Girl, you would see a girl who could hardly stand to be in the room she'd welcomed so easily previously. You would see a girl who wished so hard for her life to not change so much in one year — you would see a girl terrified of the effects a little difference could make.

     Now, perhaps, you might still see that same Avery. The one who misses all those nights spent up in the Ravenclaw dormitories, with Dominique, Rowan, Juliet, Hannah. All the nights spent staying up late past curfew and telling each other embarrassing stories about guys, and girls — Juliet was currently involving herself on an unbeknownst Hufflepuff in their year, from what she allowed herself to tell them. All the nights talking about the exhaustive stories about drama within families. Hannah was best for this — her mum had three sisters and four brothers, so, an endless amount of drama about family barbecues where one sister wouldn't show up because of petty entitlement issues. And not to mention, all the nights of cutesy comfort, laughter and friendship splayed across duvets and pillows dragged down onto the ground (because it was more homely).

     You might still see the Avery, the one holding a grudge about an appointment she had no control over — something she didn't want. But that was then. Now, you could also see a side to Avery that she perhaps wasn't fond of verbally confronting. There was a new side inhabiting the persona of Avery, in all her five-foot-six glory, one that is allowing her to see that maybe, this change wasn't so bad. Or was a side willing to welcome this change.