In Silence {Olivia}

[Zara Girard]

It had been a boring, rainy morning. Scratch that - boring, raining, Saturday morning. Zara couldn't have dragged herself to Hogsmeade even if she had tried. She was too depressed to be able to enjoy the rain like she usually does, plus, the lightnings seemed to be pretty horrid that particular day. So she settled for a quiet time in the library, with her assignments spread in front of her. But she wasn't doing them, though, no. Instead, she was reading a muggle novel that one of her friends had been kind enough to lend her.

That was how Zara had been keeping her mind of...things, these days. She realised that whenever she was alone, with nothing to do or no one to talk to, thoughts about Sirius and the fight kept coming back to haunt her. Which was bad, because she became depressed when that happened, and who in the world likes being depressed? Not Zara. When she had settled down with a good novel the other day, she found that her mind was blissfully ignorant to everything around her the moment she got sucked into the literary world, and just for a few moments, she could stop thinking about Sirius.

Which was also making her feel horrible, since he looked really upset these days. Had their break-up affected him so much? She had tried her best to make herself feel better, justifying her ignorance as something he deserved for suspecting her. For claiming to the whole world that their relationship was over even before they could talk it out. But as days went on, she found it harder to do so, looking at him being upset. Never had she seen the Sirius Black look miserable. She knew he was pretending to be cheerful as usual, just like her, but something about his demeanor told her that she was being more successful at the act than him. Which, of course, did not make her feel better about herself. Was she really that heartless?

Sighing, she forced herself to concentrate on her book again. Things will eventually get better. They will. Or at least, she hoped so. She shook her head. She should really stop over-thinking about everything and just let life take its course. And perhaps life could also send her a nice friend to keep her company right now; the library was getting a little too quiet these days.

[OLIVIA AUBREY]

Sleeping in the library was honestly one of the easiest things to happen on a lazy Tuesday evening. Especially if you were a tired Qudditch Captain after a long practice, like Olivia Aubrey was today. She had tried to find an excuse for leaving so suddenly but the girl was just annoyed. The team wasn't functioning like they had just last week. She wasn't sure exactly when the next game would be but from the sounds of it soon, and they weren't ready. The Hufflepuff qudditch team had never been the best, she knew that, but it would take a while for her to drill the fact into the teams head that to win they'd need to work, and flying around for three hours a day was not working. Maybe Olivia was the one who needed to relax, and napping in the library certainly would do the work of relaxation.

Around her people came and went, never really noticing the extremely pale haired girl. Olivia was tiny for her age, nearly coming up to the chin of everyone else in the fifth year who she talked to. Her whole body was that of a first or second year but with more grace, structure and mature features to it. Her face was angelic, holding innocence in the eyes of course. Olivia had always been young in her looks, not only was she innocent and naive but also very bubbly and willing to talk to anyone. Her skin held a certain glow too, like she was always in the sun and lived on the beach. Olivia had been to the beach once in her whole life and all she remembered was the heat, and the water. The water had been so clear and the sand so warm, it almost confused her how different the two things were but could sometimes get along. That had been in her fourth year during Christmas Vacation, her parents had thought that Olivia might've liked to go somewhere else. She didn't know why on earth the thought would posses them at all, they knew how much she hated long trips. They bored her.

Opening her eyes slowly the girl looked around her, the library was quiet for once and light dimmed. Inside the atmosphere was perfect, she almost wanted to curl up in one of the plush chairs from across her and fall asleep there again. But the clock on the wall showed differently, dinner had just ended and Olivia soon found out that her stomach yearned for something. Olivia was easily bored too, so it was good that most of the time she ended up talking to herself or another person as talkative as herself. People like that barely listened and Olivia would actually listen to people if they had something to say. So, maybe that would be her goal for now would be to just go and talk to someone.

Sliding out her chair the girl looked around, running a hand through her disheveled hair that was very pale. From the sounds of the library there wasn't much going on right now. Maybe Olivia could change that but she decided against it as she saw her good friend Zara sitting by herself reading. Olivia liked reading and Zara was good to talk with most of the time. Olivia decided that she'd rather talk to Zara than dwell on her empty stomach.

"Hey!" She whispered happily, skipping over to where Zara sat and sitting across from her with grace that only she held. Olivia could be clumsy somedays but other times she'd be graceful, she'd taken ballet up until her Hogwarts days. "Whatcha reading?" Olivia asked in her awkwardly pitched voice as she smiled at Zara from across the table.

[Zara Girard]

Zara was dangerously close to dropping her head flat on the desk and doze off fo good. Which would probably earn her an earful from Madam Pince, but honestly, Zara should blame her for keeping the library too quiet. It was like cemetery.

Just then, she heard an excited whisper of her name, and looked up, only to see Olivia. A smile spread across Zara as she sat in front of her. "Hey Olivia!" she whispered back, greeting her just as excitedly. Well, as much as she could. It had been long since she had seen the girl, and Zara kind of missed her. The girl loved talking as much as Zara did, if not more. "Whatcha reading?" Zara chuckled. "Well, nothing much. Just a novel to keep my sleepy brains alive," she told her, showing the book.

Zara couldn't really remember when she had met Olivia. Probably in her second year, when Olivia was in her first? They had both hit off really well the first time they met. Mainly because both of them loved talking, and tried to keep situations as light and drama-less as possible. (It seemed as if the latter wasn't possible for Zara anymore, looking at the whole problem with Sirius, but hey, she always tried.) Zara had always felt a little protective of Olivia, maybe because she had always wanted a sister and Olivia seemed to be the perfect one. Always cheerful and energetic.

"How are you? It's been long since I saw you!" she asked Olivia fondly, thanking Merlin that they were situated quite some distance away from Madam Pince. "I'm guessing the weird weather has driven you indoors for good?" Zara guessed. Knowing how much Olivia loved Quidditch and being on the broom, it was kind of rare to see her indoors.

[OLIVIA AUBREY]

Olivia smiled at Zara, showing her keen interest with her eyes that would crinkle at the corners with her smile. She tried to keep herself interested as much as possible these days but she thought it could be hard. All people her age sometimes wanted to talk about would be love, homework and the latest qudditch game. Now Olivia had no problem with any of these topics but they were just too cliche for her liking honestly. Zara hadn't ever really spoken of stuff like that but maybe that'd be the topic of conversation today, she'd just go along with it of course and try to keep her mind afloat with things that she'd do later. Probably finish more long homework essays to keep her good grades up. It wasn't as easy as it had looked, plus they'd have the O.W.L. exams to look forward to later. Or not, Olivia was silently dreading them as she didn't know how to exactly study for something like that. She could ask a friend but there probably wouldn't be any good solutions. She was a good student with average grades but she just didn't know how to really get her mind on studying for an hour at the time. Maybe she always thought she was just too distracted and busy for stuff like this.

"The weather...yeah," Olivia sighed with defeat as she thought about gripping her broom. It always felt so good and all she ever wanted to do was fly around the pitch and between the rings somedays. It seemed like that'd be one of the most calming things to her. That and spending time in a sleepy library that reminded her of the one at home, but it was much bigger here. Olivia loved the Hogwarts library and she always had, ever since she was a little kid it'd been one of her favorite places to visit no matter when or what she was doing. It was simply magical to her. "They told me not to practice, I could fall I guess. Wouldn't want that happening," she joked softly while looking at the glass window, streams of foggy rain showered down.

"What have you been up to? It has been a while," Olivia pointed out while leafing through a book. She felt different today, like something within her had changed. Maybe it was weather, she was always a little more serious when bad weather hit or something like that. It meant no practice, which meant bad technique for everyone and everything else possibly. Maybe no one else cared, it wasn't like Olivia didn't work her butt off for nothing. She wanted a good team this year, and for that to happen it'd mean that she'd have to work them harder than they'd worked before. A lot of the players could get easily lazy but Olivia just pressed them harder. She could be quite the captain.