Open Avoiding Someone

[Vader Hume]

Being at the Yuleball with Pho, having said those dreaded words and certainly not meant it felt wrong. He didn’t like Pho like that, he certainly didn’t love her, but she’d said it first and he thought it would be worse of him to not say it back. But, now he was at the ball, with a girl he didn’t love, who had lost a parents recently and he knew he was barely going to give her the time of day. He was working, with his camera in hand and hoping that if he worked hard enough no one would pay attention to him, and certainly not Pho. He’d let his girlfriend know when he’d be in the hall from, and when he’d be able to take breaks, so that she could decide when she wanted to join him. He hadn’t been sleeping particularly well, though he didn’t have any exam stress, the accio stress and the stress with Pho had drive his sleep back to the ground. He was looking forward to the little break, but he knew that he would likely break up with Pho over the break. He hoped she wouldn’t take it too hard, but he knew really that he was awful for dragging it out, for lying. She deserved better than him. Vader glanced around the room as he took another picture of the dancing students. He hoped that Ava would have a good time, if she came with that boy she liked but he couldn’t see her or the boy.​

 

[Leda Layton]

It was strange to be at the Yule Ball, and yet not really feel like she was really there at all. The last semester had more or less passed in a daze, and Leda wasn’t sure how it had gone by so quickly. Or had it been painfully slowly? She stood, knowing she still had duties to attend with what with being Head Girl, and that her appearance at the ball was most likely more than expected, although she’d never felt this out of touch with reality before. She was moving about the hall by herself. Zennon probably had his girlfriend to worry about and Mervyn, well, Mervyn seemed more absent in her life than ever. It was like she’d lost him too. She spotted another blonde by himself, tracking him as Pho’s boyfriend. She’d grown closer to the Slytherin who, had Olive actually married West, would have been her niece, but now things with her family were a little on edge. Vader was also the boy that had slipped out the prefect meeting very early on, which hadn’t escaped the seventh years notice at the time, even if she hadn’t brought it up. “Why do you like photos so much?” She asked when she was close enough, standing holding her own hands in front of her as she watched him snap an image of the crowd.​

 

[Vader Hume]

Vader looked away from his lens and was a little surprised by who had joined him, who had asked the question. The head girl. It wasn’t someone he knew particularly well, he was sure there had been that incident a few years before with a certain rose and a note but he had definitely put that to the back of his mind. He knew her more now as head girl and as part of Pho’s now largely broken family. He could imagine if Pho had been feeling as bad as she was, that the head girl was feeling even worse. The question made him pause and he looked to the camera in his hands, ”I like looking at the pictures,” he answered somewhat lamely, clearing his throat a little, ”It just captures a moment and holds that moment forever,” Vader thought that was a slightly better answer than his first, though both were true, pictures held a breath to him, that he could look at one and feel the air within it. The magical pictures just took it a little further, really pushing the boundaries of what classed as a moment, stretching it out to a feeling. Before he might’ve offered for her to take a picture with the camera but he didn’t want anyone to take his camera anymore. ”I’ve always like photography,” he knew she wouldn’t care, but he felt it was important to say that he did it because he liked it. ​

 

[Leda Layton]

If Leda had remembered that he was one of the students she'd teased when she was younger, she would have likely apologised to him, but it wasn't something that had stood out in her mind and so she'd overlooked it completely. She gave him a nervous thoughtful glance when he said he liked to capture moments, an idea running through her head. Then she did the math and realised Vader would never have been at the Yule Ball the year that Olive had taught there, and the Head Girl sighed in disappointment. "Right," she agreed. One day she'd have to go through her own collection, as small as it was, maybe she would have to find a photo of Olive to show her niece and nephew when they were old enough. "Do you think, if you don't take a photo, things are going to slip you by?" her question was direct and blunt but in line with the thoughts going through her head. She'd let so many opportunities slip her by too that now she had nothing left at all to remember them by. ​

 

[Vader Hume]

Vader couldn’t help but think these questions from Leda had some other reasoning, the fact she wanted to know why he did, seemed to be thinking a lot about pictures, and of course he knew that she had suffered that great loss, and much like Pho was probably trying to come to terms with it in a manner that was good. Vader looked at the camera in his hands and thought about it. He didn’t think that stuff slipped him by, not really. He had never felt like that, he’d always been more comfortable and at ease behind the camera, he’d always liked capturing the moments, and he’d never felt that they would pass him by. Though she seemed to be asking that if he didn’t take the pictures the moments would be lost, ”I think pictures are a good way to hold on to things, moments and feelings but if you don’t have it, it doesn’t make the feelings at the time any less real,” Vader captured a lot of moments, but times when it was just him and Ava talking about life didn’t need it and that was real, when he and Goku sparred and talked, he didn’t take any pictures but even then the moments didn’t slip him by, it still felt so very real. With him, all of the memories remained so firmly lodged in his head they couldn’t pass him by. ​

 

[Leda Layton]

Leda listened tentatively as Vader pretty much confirmed her fears. That photos weren’t just taken for fun but as a memory, and sure enough she didn’t have any of her own to look back on. Not unless she counted the odd image taken when Leda was very little of the sisters. In the later years, it had never really been a priority. The Head Girl nodded, “Keep doing that,” she stated, not really looking at the Gryffindor in case he saw the pain behind her eyes. Since the funeral and the days after, Leda was beginning to come to terms with what was happening, and while she wasn’t any more confident or sure of what she was supposed to do, she knew that at least she wasn’t alone and that choices wouldn’t have to be made overnight. She cleared her throat, shaking her blonde curls away from her face. “So, where’s Pho this evening?” She asked the prefect, hoping her sister was still in the mood to let her hair down even when things around her were no doubt difficult.​

 

[Vader Hume]

Vader wasn’t sure if he’d said the right thing to Leda, he couldn’t really read the expression on her face and he felt almost like he was intruding a little and didn’t think it was right for him to continue having this conversation, he knew Pho, and that was probably why she knew him too. It was then that Leda seemed to ask about it. Asking about where Pho is, he glanced at the ground and then towards the door, his cheeks blushed and he couldn’t help the little nervousness grew a little. ”She’s ehh, on her way,” he replied with a little shrug, ”I….eh...work for most of it, so I told her to come at a specific time so she wouldn’t get bored,” he told Leda, it was probably too much information for Leda, but he felt like he should justify to her when Pho wasn’t with him currently. He was coming, he would be coming to join her...eventually. He certainly wasn’t a little hopeful that she wouldn’t be in the mood to come, and he knew he wouldn’t drag her here with him. He certainly didn’t want to give the slightest hint that they were probably going to break up. ​

 

[Leda Layton]

Leda listened to Vader as he tried to tell her that Pho would likely be bored if she'd come while he was working, although truth be told, Leda had never gotten that impression from the Slytherin. She seemed quite energetic most of the time, confident in herself, although Vader probably knew Pho deeper than she ever had. Leda had only really started to get to know her in the last year or so after Olive got engaged to her father. There were so many things Leda still didn't know for sure or understand. "Does she.. seem alright to you?" If anyone knew what she was like on a day to day basis, surely it was her boyfriend. The Head Girl hadn't had much of a chance to talk to her since her outburst just before Olive's funeral, although it occurred to her that she was asking a lot of questions about the girl while Vader was trying to take photos of the unfolding scene. She cleared her throat, "Sorry, never mind. I'm sure she's fine." Leda didn't know whether to believe that, but it would do for now, to pull herself away from the fifth years busy schedule. Leda was probably better checking in for herself anyway. She glanced to the blonde, feeling like she was intruding, although she still couldn't see any of her own friends around. "What about you?" she asked, having never really had the opportunity to talk to him about why he'd disappeared so fast at the beginning of the year, and as far as she knew, Simon hadn't either. "Are you fine?" Normally the seventh year wouldn't have cared, although the mixture of being Head Girl and having just lost her sister without fully knowing how or what she'd truly thought of someone that had once been close to her, had opened her eyes to things that may lay under the surface.​