One particular Gryffindor student was glad to see the back of the unbearably long summer holiday. Most of her classmates set off for Egypt on an excitement filled excursion and even been there for the disappearance of their distinguished headmistress. “Good riddance” had been the basic response her Dad to given when reading the paper on the balcony but Gabriella hadn’t been quite so pleased. If her mum had been alive she’d be out searching for Analiza Snark, desperate to find her best friend. Felix Dagon obviously didn’t care.

Gabriella had believed he only shared a soft spot for his dragons at the start of this summer, now in September she was convinced of it. This summer had made her very much miss her best friend, someone whose house she could have escaped to when her dad and his queue of witches got too much. Unfortunately, for reasons she could no longer put her finger on, Gabby and Sophie hadn’t been talking for months.

The summer had been spent, as Gabriella described ‘in slavery’ with her moody father as the slave driver. Apparently at the age of 16, she was expected to earn her keep and work on the ranch, where Mr Dagon could see her. Unfortunately, Gabby hadn’t spent much time around the live dragons. The worst part of the whole summer was the fact that his favourite job to give her was to clear out the dragon’s caves and enclosures.

After 2 months of shovelling tons of dragon poo without the use of magic, Gabriella would have been ready to throw the spade over Felix’s head if she hadn’t been so exhausted she’d often fallen asleep at dinner.

Today Gabby didn’t have excrement to shovel. She didn’t have to get up early and be her dad’s unpaid slave for yet another torturous day. The young girl fully intended to stay in bed for as much of the day as possible. Or she might get up for lunch; she’d be ready to eat a dragon by then.

BANG! The noise caused a groan from the grumpy teenager and she rolled over, screwing her eyes closed tightly.

Creeeeaaakkk...shhhhhhh...crack. the noise continued and Gabriella sat up in her bed, grabbed hold of the curtain and tugged it open, almost pulling the fabric off the railing in her groggy grump.

Sleepy dark brown eyes clocked the noise maker and brows knitted together. “Ugh!”

Sophie had been awake for hours, most people had been actually. It was breakfast and then trying to enjoy the last free day before it was back to lessons and the grindstone and having it drilled into their skulls that this was a very important year and if the buggered it they'd be buggered in another year when it came to their NEWT Levels; and subsequently buggered for life because there was no way you could get any kind of job worth having if you didn't excel on your NEWTs. Of course that was a big fat lie, the proof was in Sophie's father. He'd been an average student at best and he'd made a fairly nice life for himself, save the becoming a drunk after the death of his wife and abandoning his youngest daughter for three months to shag groupies (at least that was how Sophie looked at it).

She wasn't particularly bitter anymore, she'd taken the owl that he wouldn't be back to take her to the platform in stride... because really what did any of it matter? She was sixteen, she could take care of herself alright, she'd done it most of the summer and hadn't died or anything. It was the same way she couldn't muster the bitter bile when seeing people who had been friends at one time for the first time in ages on the train, what would getting emotional about it solve? Nothing... and it would give those people who had not been so great of friends some kind of twisted power to effect her. It'd been six months, maybe not a long time in the grand scheme of tings but long enough that the pain of it all had ebbed a little, she knew it would never go away but it was manageable.

So, to say that she was unpacking her trunk and putting pictures back up, and in general trying to annoy Gabby on purpose would have been false. Sophie didn't even really register the other girl's presence in the room, with the curtains pulled how was she supposed to know that her former best friend was wasting the day away in bed. For all Sophie could tell she was alone in the room. Besides, even if she had known, Soph was wretched at being quiet. She tried but it just wasn't in her nature - which was why she'd never be an art thief no matter how much she had joked with Deus about it, and besides all of that there was the fact that she had already extended one Olive branch to the other girl. Gabby had been invited to the Bonfire, she had opted out of coming, that was the end of that. So when a particularly loud grunt sounded behind her Sophie jumped, tensed, then went back to sticking pictures above her bed, muttering a "Sorry" as she went.

Long bushy brown hair that looked as if it had been in a hurricane framed the face and half covered the eyes of the girl that was glaring at her ex-best friend. Gabby wasn’t even sure anymore why Sophie was her ex-friend. Grandma had told her to apologise and give her a hug because “The poor little girl needs her friends, dear. I’m disappointed in you.” Felix (Gabriella had decided he didn’t deserve to be called Dad any longer) hadn’t had much to say on the subject, obviously pleased to be gaining a slave for the tough summer.

Gabby just missed being able to spend time with Sophie and whine about how cruel Felix was.

But apologising for something Gabby couldn’t even remember? Was her grandmother crazy? Gabby already knew the answer to that, she’d raised Felix. This little Dagon was just like her father, she didn’t do apologies unless a metaphorical (or real) wand was in her back. Yet Gabby didn’t do very well not having her best friend either.

“Sorry.” Sophie quietly muttered, not sparing a glance at her grumpy housemate. Gabby frowned and lifted a hand to her face, rubbing her eyes to relieve them of any traced of sleep before she pushed the covers back and climbed out of bed. The young girl stood by her bed, watching Sophie for several moments, trying to find some words to say as she folded her arms over her chest.

“Grandma asked how you are.” Gabby ventured, cautiously watching the other girl.

Sophie was kneeling at the head of her bed trying to remember how she had arranged her pictures the previous year and wondering how she was going to incorporate all the new ones of she and Ollie taken over the summer (it did cross her mind to replace all the pictures of she and Gabby with ones of she and Ollie but that seemed excessively cruel), when she heard the other Gryffindor speak. For a long moment she didn't say anything, she considered not answering at all. She also went through a myriad of snappy responses like I know, that's why she owl'd me, and several other equally childish things before finally turning to look at the other girl.

She looked miserable, and tried, and grumpy... but she also looked like Gabby. Gabby who had been her best friend since first year, Gabby who flopped in her bed with dramatic sighs and stories of the latest woes from the Pitch, Gabby who had been as much like a sister as a friend for almost five whole years. It wad hard to remain disengaged when she looked at her like that, it was hard to begrudge the other girl's inability to deal with the death of Ramona. For the first time in her whole life Sophie had had the unfortunate induction into life without a mother. It was too much for some people to deal with, maybe it was understandable that Gabby hadn't been able to.

So she took a deep breath and sat cross legged in the middle of her bed, pictures resting in her lap as she gave the other girl a shrug, "Alright. Da and Johnny went on tour with the Siren. He owl'd a few days ago that they were playing shows in Spain now, don't ask me why, I've no idea, and he wouldn't be back in time to see me off. Emmy is still in Greece trying to unravel the link between Seers and Oracles, Rubes came back from America middle of the month I guess? About the twelfth I think, so it was mostly me, Nan, and the mutts. Ollie stayed a bit though, between full moons anyway..." she sort of trailed off and gave another shrug, "Felix keep you locked in a tower away from the trainees"?

Gabby knew Sophie had pretty much been abandoned by her family over the summer, Grandma had informed her between lectures on being a good friend and not giving Felix such a hard time and showing him some respect because he was her Dad. It had made Gabby want to contact Sophie, to go and see her but she didn’t have the guts and she doubted Felix would let her considering he was still tormenting her because of Christmas. Dads took things way too personally.

A quick thought came to Gabby’s mind before she pushed it away.  Felix hadn’t gone off and left her when her mum had been killed. He’d stuck around to torture her until she was old enough to escape. Sophie’s dad didn’t seem to want to do the same.

“That sucks.” Dagon muttered, her eyes quickly glancing to the couple of pictures Sophie had put up by her bed. There were no happy moving images of the former best friends standing there. Gabby knew she had to sort that out because no one else was going to want her face so close to their pillow at night.

When Sophie asked Gabby about her summer, the dark haired Gryffindor sat herself on the edge of the bed and offered her housemate a dramatic shake of the head. “Worse!” she responded, eyes wide as she was suddenly awake and ready to make amends with her friend in the only way she knew how, complaining about her father.

“He’s still furious about Christmas and me lying to him so I ended up as his slave over the summer. Hours upon hours of shovelling dragon poo!” In reality it had only happened a few times, but where was the drama without such exaggeration? “I’d have preferred being in detention with Professor Storm.” After a pause, Gabby frowned again, dark eyes falling on Sophie. “I’m sorry your family just left you with your Nan.”

"Well," Sophie started with a good natured laugh, "you did sort of lie to him and me about coming home with me for the holiday. Mucking out caves sounds vile though," she eyed the other dark haired girl sizing her up in a way before she leaned forward and asked in a hushed voice, "what'd you do to get back at him"? Gabby was pretty good at the whole revenge thing, very creative too. It was something that had brought them together in the beginning. Sophie had been a wild pranker 'way back when'. It was kind of what the house was known for, especially with the particular crop of Gryffindors they had grown up with. It was strange how not strange just talking to the other girl felt. It was as though they could just slip back into being the people they had been before. It wasn't really that easy, Sophie knew, but it was tempting to ignore the giant elephant in the room.

And then Gabby just kind of ran smack dab into it, and Sophie looked down to the pictures in her lap. She didn't know what to say really, what could you say? She was sorry Sophie's family had abandoned her, but was she sorry she had done the same thing? Was it even fair to expect her to be sorry? Did Sophie even want her to be sorry? She wasn't sure, a part of her did. A part of her wanted someone to acknowledge that this terrible thing had happened to her and she had been alone... but in thinking that Sophie knew it wasn't true. People had been there for her, it just wasn't the people one might have thought. So she just sort of nodded, she couldn't say it was ok because it wasn't. She couldn't say she was fine because that wasn't completely true either. Chewing on her bottom lip she considered how to move forward carefully, she didn't want to make the other girl feel defensive.

"When Ruby came home," she paused, finally looking up from the pile of pictures, lips drawn together in a thin line, "she told me that she left because she didn't see another way to survive. She said she saw her life stretching out before her and exactly how it would be and how much she would end up hating it and everyone else, and it made me realize that this thing didn't just happen to me," she stopped again and took another deep breath. She didn't want to cry, "Losing my mum was this horrible thing that happened to everyone she loved and everyone who loved her, and sometimes to survive we have to put what we need in front of what other people need. It wasn't fair of anyone to expect Ruby to take care of us, to take care of me," she gave a small shrug, "Dunno what my da's excuse is, but I'm sure he's got one". She hoped Gabby understood the subtext of the story, that Sophie didn't begrudge her having to walk away anymore.

A proud smile began to twist Gabby’s lips as she remembered how she’d sought revenge on Felix for stopping her from going to Egypt. “I covered his bed sheets and clothes in itching powder, the kind that you can’t even wash off your skin for 6 hours, and I put magical pink dye in his shampoo. “ Gabby wasn’t going to mention her father’s reaction to this. Going to bed that night to a sooty mess where her bed sheets and duvet used to be had just caused a war within the house lasting the entire summer. Gabby had never been so glad to get back to school as she was this year.

But however terrible Gabby’s summer had been with a Dad who was mentally 15 years old, Sophie was dealing with something worse. As Grandma had also informed her granddaughter, “At least You have a father to complain about, Gabriella. Poor Sophia (she’d never got her name right) doesn’t seem to have that this summer, dear.” Gabby hated how her Grandma was always right.

Dark eyes had fallen to the stuffed dragon on her pillow as Sophie spoke, as Gabby was convinced, indirectly about her. Yes she felt guilty about it but she couldn’t go back and be supportive, she hadn’t wanted someone taking about that.

The selfishness within the young Gryffindor had kicked in in full force when her best friend had lost her mother. She hadn’t wanted to hear someone talking about it because she’d never been able to. Her own father refused to talk about her and did what he could to stop Gabby talking to her mother’s friends as well. Grandma always refused to mention Kayleigh as well.  A horrible part of Gabby also wanted to point out to her friend that she had at least had a mother for that long. But she’d stopped herself, instead she’d distanced herself and let Sophie alone.

Gabriella took a deep breath before shrugging her shoulders. “You should have at least had your best friend to talk to. I was a selfish cow, Soph.”

Sophie's laugh was loud as it bounced off the tower's stone walls and she quickly covered her mouth and shook her head. The only person who could possibly win a prank war with Gabby was Deus, and of course that thought made her think of all the things that had happened this summer she couldn't tell the other girl about. Of course Gabby wasn't likely to be impressed, well the shoes that turned Sophie into a gorgeous leggy twenty-something might impress her but Deus would not. It was funny how that didn't matter to Sophie, it didn't matter that Luc didn't like him or that Ollie wasn't totally sold on him as an object of affection. There were lots of things that might make Sophie have doubts, but other people not approving wouldn't be one of them... not when a stack of napkin notes could make her heart flutter a little.

The heaviness of the conversation made Sophie sigh as she reached out to take the other girl's hands, chewing her bottom lip, "I dunno what you need me to say Gabs. Do you need me to say I forgive you? I do. I can't be mad at you. I can't be mad about any of it anymore. It hurts too much to so angry and never have it change anything except to make you feel more alone". It was a very grown up idea, especially for someone as notoriously immature as Sophie Flickwick. She had been such an idealist just a year ago, sitting on her bed talking to Gabby and trying to get her to join SAWS, she had thought it was all about civil liberties and Ollie. Life was shockingly simple when everything was either right or wrong, good or bad, now she lived in a world of monochrome grays. There were no easy answers.

"It was hard, and it hurt...but I understand it. I just made a choice you know? I woke up one day and the house felt so empty and I felt so alone, and I just couldn't. I couldn't keep living every single day like that. It isn't what Mum would have wanted, not for any of us," she paused and gave a small sniff, shaking her hair out of her eyes as she squeezed Gabby's fingers, "I can't be angry at people for not knowing what to do, if I want to have some kind of life I have to let go. So I did. And now I look at it like this, if you want to be in my life there is always going to be a place for you, no questions asked... but if you can't then ok too. It was just too hard for some people. I can't be angry about that or I'll never find anything to be happy about," she gave a small shrug and just sort of waited for the other girl to decide which part of the line she wanted to be on.

Gabby looked at her former best friend, struggling to hide her mild amazement at the words flooding from her mouth. Sophie was being very mature for...Sophie. Words of pointless anger, forgiveness and loneliness with a realisation Gabs was damn sure she’d never come to. Yet it sounded right, smart. Gabby had needed her pushy Grandmother to point her in the right direction regarding her friend and Sophie got there all by herself.

“It’s not too hard, Soph.” Gabriella started to respond, mentally scolding herself for her behaviour when Sophie Flitwick was suddenly being so mature. “I just wasn’t prepared to try. I was selfish when you needed a friend.” A tiny tear formed in the corner of Gab’s eye and she wiped it away with her fist.

Grandma had told Gabby she could be a friend without even bringing up the subject, just provide a distraction. Gabs knew that was what her Grandma always did. Every time Gabs had tried to ask about her mum, Juliette Dagon would find anything else of remote interest to bring up. With that thought, Gabby looked across at her friend and pulled her hand away before she suddenly launched herself at Sophie, jumping on her and hugging her tightly on the small bed as their two heads hanged down off the side.

“I’ve missed you, Wickerflick.” She giggled, holding her friend down and placing a huge sloppy kiss on her cheek.

Sophie didn't agree with Gabby's assertion that had been selfish, at least not visibly. Maybe, yea, it had been... but sometimes self preservation had to come before anything else. The people who made Sophie angry were the people who acted like because she was trying to have a life, some kind of normal life instead of spending it locked away in her room sobbing, made her a disloyal daughter. As though her life was supposed to stop at fifteen, that she was never supposed to laugh, or sing, or be happy again. Did it still hurt? Every goddamned day of her life, yes, it hurt, it felt like there was a piece of her missing - and it wasn't like when a boy broke your heart and eventually it would grow back together because there were always more boys to be found. There was not another Ramona in the whole of the Universe, she would never have another mother. But it hurt in a different way now than it had in the beginning, less raw, less crushing.

Could she and Gabby go back to just being the best friends they had been? No, not realistically, but they could try to be better people for one another. They could try to be understanding, that was what Sophie had learned over the summer of not having Duncan. Relationships changed, the people you were best friends with in First Year were not, necessarily the friends you would carry with you for the rest of your life. Time changes all things, and the two of them were no different. Still, the past was a powerful binder and when Gabby pounced on her (sending the pile of pictures that had been in her lap fluttering to the floor) the petite Gryffindor found herself giggling gleefully as she wrapped her arms and legs around the other girl. There was something comfortable and familiar about the action, about the scene. It was as though no time had passed between them at all, "I missed you, Dragonbreath". It was going to be a good year, she could feel it in her bones.

As Gabby pulled back she wrinkled her soft features at the name. Since she’d just woken up it was probably dragon breath that she had. Well, no one’s breath could be as bad as a dragons, Gabriella feared for anyone if they got close. She’d smelt what a dragon blew out and it quite literally made the stomach turn. Needless to say she never wanted to experience such revulsion again. Rotten eggs, rotting carcasses and troll farts only went so far to describing the stench. The nickname was harmless, though.

Or so Gabriella hoped.

“The summer was torture.” The dark haired girl muttered as she rolled off Sophie and lay next to her across the bed. “Felix has the brain of a mentally incapable troll and as much self control as a horny dog humping a cupboard door.” And the women this time may as well have been cupboard doors for what they had in their heads!

“I asked if I could come to the BBQ, Soph.” Gabriella frowned, crossing her arms over the baggy vest top she wore. “He said no. Still punishing me for Christmas, stupid idiot he is.” Gabby wasn’t going to mention whyshe was still being punished at the time. Sophie could probably guess what had took place over the holidays.