don't get lost in the crowd [anna]

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Getting permission to come onto the Hogwarts grounds wasn't hard. Everyone from everywhere wanted to see the second task - it promised to be interesting, and it was more interesting than Quidditch by most people's standards. Dustin was not one of those people, but that was beside the point. Getting permission to come onto the Hogwarts grounds had been easy, but getting permission to stay hadn't been. Trying to explain that he was friends with Anna Weasley and needed to talk to her was kind of hard to do, since everyone wanted to be friends with the Hogwarts Champion and insisted they needed to talk to her for her autograph or something like that. Eventually Dustin had given up that line of thinking and said that he wanted to visit his sisters, which was apparently a more appropriate answer. After jotting off a letter to his sisters explaining where he would be if anyone asked, Dustin had headed down to the Quidditch pitch, where he had asked Anna to meet him when he had sent her a short, simple letter the night before. The pitch was the only place that he was comfortable, and the only place he wouldn't feel out of place if Anna never came.

@annelise

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Today was an extremely hectic day. It started out with not being able to sleep and meditating to her best friend to moving along in the Tournament with the Task that drained her more than she could have imagined. Then after that she had to deal with all the people who wanted to talk to her afterwards. Now, she finally had a bit of peace and there were only two people she wanted to see, and she was on her way to see one of them. Dustin. He was a close friend from other years, but he was a year older than her and now a professional Quidditch player, who came to see her task. 

Anna made her way to the Quidditch Pitch, quite proud when she realized that not only was she on time, she was a little early! She smiled when she saw a familiar figure up in front of her. "Hey stranger! What are you doing here? You don't look young enough to be a student," she teased as she approached him. Man, how she'd missed her dear friend during this last year. She moved to give him a hug. "I missed you Dustin." 

@dustin

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Dustin needn’t have worried about Anna showing up, despite the things he had written to her around Christmastime. It seemed that Anna had already moved on from those things… or had forgotten about them. Dustin hoped that it was the former, because he was planning on doing some serious groveling about what he had said, especially considering Anna’s performance in today’s task, and if she had forgotten… Well, that would just be weird. “Hey, Anna.” Dustin said, giving her an easygoing smile and accepting her hug. “I missed you too, Weasel.” He said, winking at Anna when he used the nickname on her. “I’m sorry I didn’t write. I mean, I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to, after what I said about winning and stuff…” Dustin trailed off, looking down at his feet for a moment so that he could look properly contrite. “I’m sorry about that, Anna. I didn’t mean to, you know…” He made a hand motion that didn’t clarify his meaning whatsoever. He was just going to hope that Anna would understand what he meant and accept his somewhat ill-formatted apology for what it was.

@annelise

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Anna rolled her eyes and gave a fake glare when Dustin called her Weasel. Sometimes he had the weirdest nicknames, but it didn't annoy her. At least, not right now. She still couldn't believe he was here! "You're such a goof," she responded. Then he started apologizing about not writing and trailed off, looking away and apologetic at all. A part of Anna was shocked. Dustin was apologizing to her? She couldn't remember a time when he'd ever done that before ... but then again she hadn't really ever gotten angry at him before. She inhaled and offered a small smile. "Thanks, Dus. It's okay. I mean, I was mad at the time, but I'm over it now." She paused, then added, "but you don't have to stop writing me just because we get in an argument. I enjoy talking to you and ... I missed that." She hoped he didn't think she was exaggerating or anything because Anna really meant it. Dustin was an old friend and not talking had been weird. She was angry, but she moved on and wanted things back to normal now.

@dustin

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Dustin grinned at Anna when she said that he was a goof. He hadn’t had a lot of time to be goofy lately, so having someone outside of the Quidditch world, and his family, and his mess with Vi, was relaxing in a way that he hadn’t anticipated. Especially because he had thought that he had messed this up, but he hadn’t. He had been forgiven. Now if only he was as good at forgiving others as he was at being forgiven… Anna said that she had been mad at the time, but that she had gotten over it, and even if she hadn’t, she didn’t want him to stop writing just because she was mad. “I figured I would just make things worse or stick my foot in my mouth again.” Dustin explained. “When my sisters and I would argue my mum would send us to different rooms for a while before making us come back together and work it out, so that we could get all of our anger out and actually have a nice conversation.” While his lack of contact with Anna had lasted a lot longer than Dustin had originally intended, the result was the same: they were having a nice, civil conversation now.

@annelise

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It was nice seeing Dustin. Weird not having her in the Common Room to tease and mess around with, but she mostly realized this now that he was here. The year had been so busy that she didn't have much time for missing the people that moved on with their lives. She shrugged when he explained why he'd stopped writing her. "Things might have gotten worse for a bit, but people say things they shouldn't all the time. Even me," she teased with a smile. "That doesn't mean I want to go weeks without talking to you. If I knew that's why you weren't saying anything, I would have sent you an owl demanding you write me." He knew her well enough to know that wasn't just idle talk either. She smiled, "How have you been? And what did you think of the Task?" That was probably why he was here, after all. She came out in first, but not by a long way. Anna still wasn't sure how she felt about it, to be honest.  

@dustin

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Dustin shrugged when Anna said that people said things they shouldn’t all the time. He knew that, of course, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t apologize for it and explain why he had decided to back off for a little bit. In an argument, it always seemed easier to let the wronged party start the conversation again, when they felt like they were ready to deal with everything again. And now, if something similar happened again, Anna would know that he was waiting on her, and not vice versa. “I’m going to chicken out of that question.” Dustin said when Anna asked how he had been. It had already been hard enough navigating a conversation with Kinsey without letting on to how frustrated he really was with everything that he was going on, and he didn’t want to have to do the same dance with Anna. He really hoped that she took his chicken out without question, because if she pushed, then chances were they would end up in another argument. It was much easier to talk about the task and how it had gone. “You did really well.” Dustin complimented Anna. That much was true. He hadn’t paid much attention to the task when the other Champions had been competing, but Anna had gotten first place, so her superiority was evident.

@annelise

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Anna rolled her eyes when he said he was going to chicken out on her question, but she didn't want to push him, especially since it'd been so long since they'd last talked. "Alright then, if you're going to chicken out on my questions, then you have to come up with stuff for us to talk about," she teased. "Or ... did you already have stuff you wanted to talk about, since you asked me to meet you here," she felt silly for not thinking that in the first place. Why would he ask to meet her if he didn't want to talk to her about something? He mentioned that she did well and Anna smiled. "Thanks. I feel like I could sleep for an entire year now," she admitted. Dustin would probably understand the exhaustion. Didn't he ever get exhausted after playing his games? 

@dustin

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Anna didn’t seem pleased with him choosing not to answer her question about how he’d been, but at least she didn’t press the matter any more. If she had, Dustin probably would have just walked away. He was too damn tired of everything to try to figure out a way to explain it to someone who had no knowledge of any of the involved parties. “All I really wanted to say was that I’m sorry.” Dustin said with a shrug when Anna asked him if he had a topic that he wanted to talk about. He had expected a little less than the forgiveness than he had been given, so he had anticipated a longer conversation. Anna accepted his compliment, and then said that she could sleep for an entire year. Dustin chuckled a little. “Gotta love the adrenaline crash.” He said, not-so-fondly. After everything that Anna had gone through, she was probably crashing really hard right now. “If you want, you can just go sleep.” Dustin offered. She needed to sleep, and he had said his piece.

@annelise

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Anna nodded when he said that what he'd really wanted to do was say sorry. "That's all?" she said, lifting an eyebrow to tease him. "We don't talk or anything for months and all you want to do is apologize." Anna couldn't help a small chuckle. Maybe she could get Dustin to do something ... "If you want I can introduce you to my boyfriend. I seem to remember you mentioning that in your letters," she mentioned. If he didn't want to that was fine, but it was an idea, which was better than nothing. He laughed, mentioning the adrenaline crash and Anna smiled, shaking her head when he said she could go to sleep. "No, if I do that I'm going to mess up my whole sleeping pattern," she wrinkled her nose in distaste. Really, Anna didn't have a specific time when she went to bed, but she knew that if she did it in the middle of the day she wouldn't be able to sleep that night, no matter how tired she was.

@dustin 
(I was thinking, if he wants to meet Oscar we can kind of end the thread and just imply that the meeting happens instead of actually threading it out ... unless you want to do that. Just an idea though)

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Dustin nodded when Anna asked if that was all, expressing her disbelief that after months of not communicating, the only thing he would want to do was apologize. “I didn’t know whether or not you were going to accept it!” He protested. If he had had a hundred conversations planned out for after she accepted his apology, and she had ended up rejecting it… that would have hurt. It was better to assume the worst, Dustin thought. His thoughts inadvertently flashed to Vi, and Dustin closed his eyes. He needed to focus on what was happening in front of him instead of constantly thinking about his ex-girlfriend. “Yes! Show me your boy!” Dustin said eagerly. He didn’t know where Anna’s boyfriend was, but hopefully seeing them together would help him get over his own romantic woes. Anna mentioned something about ruining her sleeping schedule, but Dustin scoffed at her. “Never mind sleep, then. Show me the boy!” Dustin repeated, grabbing onto Anna and marching them off the Quidditch pitch so that they could find said boy.

@annelise
(le end~)