𝒟𝓎𝓈𝒶𝓃𝒾𝒶 (𝓃.)
𝐹𝒾𝓃𝒹𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒾𝓉 𝑒𝓍𝓉𝓇𝑒𝓂𝑒𝓁𝓎 𝒽𝒶𝓇𝒹 𝓉𝑜 𝑔𝑒𝓉 𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝑜𝒻 𝒷𝑒𝒹 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓂𝑜𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈
Elizabeth was not doing very well. Not at all.
Normally she's great at coping, or so she tells herself because no one is really 'great' at coping, but right now everything in her life was crashing down. For Elizabeth, her coping mechanism included a serious case of dysania.
"Lizzy, hun, you need to get up." Dorcas spoke, shaking her best friend. Lizzy responded with a simple groan as she turned, her back now facing the curly-haired girl.
"Okay that's it." was all Lizzy heard before Cassidy's uttered a spell causing Lizzy to jump out from her bed. "I get you need to cope babe, but laying in bed all day isn't going to help you get back on your feet, this is not what they would've wanted for you."
Elizabeth knew her friends were right and quickly got dressed. The three girls made their way from the Ravenclaw Tower down to the Great Hall. They were serving pancakes today, her favorites. Cassidy and Dorcas may or may not have made a few requests to the kitchen elves the day prior, anything to cheer up their best friend.
The two realized that Lizzy seemed to be at an emotional standstill that they needed to pull her out of. Cassidy had written it all down:
The seven stages of grief:
1. Shock ✓
2. Denial ✓
3. Anger ✓
4. Bargaining ✓
5. Depression ✓
6. Testing
7. Acceptance
The two girls had concluded that it was their duty to get their friend to the 6th stage, testing. They needed to get her to begin looking for more realistic solutions and pulling herself back together.
All the psychology books Cassidy had her parents mail her from the muggle library even stated that staying stuck in the Depression stage can be detrimental to one's mental health and the two girls just could not let their best friend stay in such a dark place. Dorcas blamed Nargspurts. A breed of Nargles and Wackspurts that are much meaner. Dorcas cast spells each night to ward them off, but Elizabeth's mood had yet to change.
Other than Dorcas' nightly spells, the girls didn't know what exactly they needed to do to get Elizabeth to stage six. Psychology book, after psychology book, after psychology book, kept saying that they needed to find her something new to distract herself with.
But what that is the two Ravenclaws just couldn't figure out.
And they tried everything.
Lizzy hadn't shown up for Quidditch tryouts two days prior and evidently lost her spot on the team. She spent so long working for that spot, endless summer days practicing on her broom with Uncle Evan. Everyone at Hogwarts knew she was the best female Chaser the school had ever seen, but no one knew why she quit, and Lizzy never bothered to give an answer.
The books that had brought the girl comfort when facing emotional hurdles in the past lay unopen on her bedside table. No new annotations to be found in the already overcrowded pages.
Even Severus began to worry about the girl. Another member of the Slug Club, Severus and Lizzy had always been tied neck-and-neck in Potions. Both competing for Slughorns praise, a rivalry turned friendship 3rd year when Lizzy had suggested he use a dash of cinnamon in his mixture, a suggestion that evidently won him a potion of liquid luck from Professor Slughorn. Cassidy and Dorcas had recruited Snape to try and get Lizzy back into Potions again, but his attempts proved as unfruitful as their own.
This brings us back to now, Cassidy and Dorcas watch as their best friend sits, slowly cutting her pancake up into smaller pieces, her back slouched, and both her elbows resting on the table. She was the picture of exhaustion even though she had plenty more than 8 hours of sleep the previous night.
If the two girls were to turn around right now they might've noticed a gaze from two tables down, piercing its way straight through the Hufflepuff table to land on a certain Ravenclaw. A glint of mischief and worry rest in his eyes.
Cassidy and Dorcas may be receiving some much-needed help soon.
--
It was time for Divination. The Ravenclaws and Gryffindors had this class together, something that normally Lizzy didn't mind. She has nothing against any of the Gryffindors and actually got along quite well with some of them.
The only Gryffindors that were ever really bothersome were the little group that called themselves "The Marauders." Always disrupting class, never taking notes, and still somehow always getting good grades? It made no sense, but Lizzy tried to mind her own business when it came to things like that.
The three girls found their seats at the front of the classroom and the group of troublemakers, who normally sat towards the back, found themselves directly behind Lizzy's table.
Sat between her two best friends Lizzy began to prepare her parchment and quill for the day's notes, even writing the date felt tedious to her. She thought about how she was expected to write notes for the entire period and the exhaustion suddenly began weighing down on her shoulders even more than before.
Her friends knew this, of course, and always copied their notes for Lizzy after class, knowing she would need them once she was ready and back in the groove of things.
Completed with the date, Lizzy moved on to write the title when she suddenly felt a push on her chair. She ignored it at first, too tired to turn around or even care as to who has done that. She's been bullied before, "a blood-traitor" they call her for hanging out with muggle-borns, but she learned to ignore, ignore, ignore.
Normally, if she ignored enough the bullying would stop, but not this time. The kick kept coming again, and again, and again, pushing her so far forward that she was suffocating between the desk and the back of her chair.
Finally, she turned around to place a face to the committer of this deed and was confused when she was met with a smirking James Potter.
One quality Elizabeth prides herself on most is her ability to read people so well. Years of studying people's body languages and brain processes, she could quickly tell what exactly that glint in James' eye meant. He wanted to annoy her. He was pushing for any sort of reaction.
She decided not to give him that satisfaction and turned right back around to face forward right as Professor Trelawney entered the classroom to start the lesson.
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Hey guys!! I was so excited to see that people were reading and liking my story, it makes me so happy omg thank you so much! I hope you are enjoying the story so far!
Who is your favorite character so far? To be honest, I want you all to fall in love with Dorcas by the end of this story because I'm trying to make her like a Luna Lovegood type-beat.
YOU ARE READING
Opia {j. potter}
Romance𝓞𝓹𝓲𝓪 (𝓃) 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒶𝓂𝒷𝒾𝑔𝓊𝑜𝓊𝓈 𝒾𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓃𝓈𝒾𝓉𝓎 𝑜𝒻 𝓁𝑜𝑜𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑒𝓎𝑒 𝓌𝒽𝒾𝒸𝒽 𝒸𝒶𝓃 𝒻𝑒𝑒𝓁 𝓈𝒾𝓂𝓊𝓁𝓉𝒶𝓃𝑒𝑜𝓊𝓈𝓁𝓎 𝒾𝓃𝓋𝒶𝓈𝒾𝓋𝑒 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓋𝓊𝓁𝓃𝑒𝓇𝒶𝒷𝓁𝑒. Elizabeth Rosier thought she was...
