Running away from an awkward situation was much more difficult when the person you were trying to run away from insisted on coming with you. Okay – so maybe he didn't exactly insist (more like 'asked'), but Lindsay really didn't want to hurt his feelings any further. With her luck she'd say goodbye and start back toward the common room only for Nigel to leave in the same direction. Then they'd be forced to walk silently and separately – but also together – and Lindsay would feel horrible, awkward, and stupid (as usual). At the end of the day it was just easier to let him walk her back, even though she knew how to get back on her own. She'd been doing it for almost six years, after all. She didn't anticipate running into any predators on the way, either. She wouldn't take it as a blow to her honor, though. Boys just liked to walk girls places sometimes. Even when they were weird, boys were still better than most girls.

“Um, okay,” she managed, glancing up at him briefly. He didn't look particularly emotionally distraught, but she still wasn't convinced she hadn't made him entirely uncomfortable. She started toward the door at the other end of the bridge, where she'd been headed before she'd been compelled to stop and say hello to Nigel. In hindsight, they might both have been better off if she'd just kept walking and left him to the abyss, but it was way too late for that now. She'd opened this can of worms and now she had to deal with it. Her duties as the opener-of-the-can-of-worms, she supposed, primarily included prattling on about nothing in order to make the walk back to Hufflepuff less awkward for the both of them.  

“The cold isn't that bad,” she remarked, returning to discussing the weather, which was a universal 'safe topic.' It may have been boring, but at least she couldn't accidentally bring up murder that way... she hoped. “I just like to be careful, since I catch colds a lot more now, because I got hurt playing quidditch,” she rambled. Her immune system really hadn't been the same since that bludger obliterated her spleen. Naturally, of all of the people on the quidditch team who could have lost a vital organ, it had to be Lindsay – as if the frantic girl needed another thing to obsess about. “It'll be warmer soon, though. Probably more rainier, too, but better weather for flying, I think. That will be nice.” Merlin, she was even boring herself. With any luck he'd change the subject and save them both from death-by-awkward-boring-conversation.  Or maybe, considering the other recent line of conversation, silence would be better in this instance.


we don't realize our faith in the prize unless its been somehow elusive
how swiftly we choose it - the sacred simplicity of you at my side