i'm letting go;; open

[erinn lacey thomas]

The holiday seasons, for Erinn at least, usually entailed spending the time with all of her siblings and parents and generally having an amazing time. They would hang out, play Quidditch, catch up on everything they'd missed in each others lives and have family meals every night. They were a tight-knit bunch, despite all their differences and troubles, but this year it was different. Frankie was, well, whatever she was and her parents didn't really want to talk to her. Actually, they didn't want to talk to her in least now that they had gotten over everything with Frankie and were now able to worry about what was going on with her. Specifically, they were utterly horrified by the fact that she was in a relationship with Nika Krum. Not only was Nika a Slytherin, which her parents were completely against, she was also a girl. As far as Erinn's parents were concerned, that was wrong and they wouldn't approve of it, no matter what the circumstances.

So, instead of her happy holiday spent at home with her family, Erinn had to make other plans. Given the recent state of things around the school, that wasn't exactly easy for her. There weren't many people that she was actually interested in spending her time with, so she had more or less been just hiding out on her own. She'd been at Nika's for a day or two, but then had let Nika go off and do her own thing back in Bulgaria or whatever. Erinn wasn't really sure. All she knew was that being alone was getting increasingly more difficult, not to mention boring, the longer that it lasted. Her twin was back home, Ellie went home, everyone else in her dorm was home, leaving her there to fend for herself. Anyone that knows Erinn knows that leaving her to her own devices for any length of time was a dangerous thing. Under the best of circumstances, she was prone to make terrible decisions and find herself in the worst of situations. Under the mental stress that she was currently in, it was bound to be that much more of a disaster.

Lying in her bed, Erinn was tossing her quaffle up at the roof, letting it hit it with a thud before it streaked back down towards her waiting hands. This had been her relative position for the last three days. She'd yet to shower, get dressed and had only eaten when the house elves insisted upon it. It wasn't the best of things for her, obviously, but she couldn't muster up the motivation to bother doing anything else with her time. Perhaps she was a bit of a drama queen, but at the moment she rather felt like everyone that she knew had deserted her for the break and left her there to wallow in self-pity and general misery. Even if she had been acting like she was okay the last few weeks, anyone that knew her could obviously tell that she was still a complete mess. They were all just stupid and didn't care, if you asked Erinn at the moment.

As the Quaffle came back down, Erinn flicked her foot up, kicking it across the room at the far wall, where it bounced back and rolled up under her bed. She could only sit there playing with her Quaffle for so long before the monotony drove her crazy. Even if she had nowhere to go and no one in particular to go see, she was going to get out of the room one way or another. Maybe she'd try her hand at apparating illegally or floo over to Diagon and look for something worthwhile to do there. Obviously, there had to be something that Erinn could busy herself with that would take her mind off of anything and everything else. What, exactly, that would entail, Erinn wasn't sure yet, but she'd figure it out eventually. Of course, that would require her to roll out of bed and take a shower for once that week. Willing herself up, she gathered what she assumed was a clean set of clothes and traipsed over to the shower.

Since it had been awhile since she'd showered, it took her a bit of extra time until she felt clean enough to actually go out in public. Even if she wasn't in the best of moods, she still wasn't going to go out looking like a complete bum. Once she was out and dressed again, Erinn left from her dormitory, frowning a bit when she saw people milling about the commons. She hadn't exactly wanted to see people that she knew, just strangers, really. Staying off towards the walls, Erinn made her way across the commons room without being bothered, which was a good thing, most likely. From there, it took only a bit longer to get down to the bottom of the castle and out to the grounds. The closest place that she could floo from was Hogsmeade, so she had to walk over that way to find a fireplace in one of the stores that could take her to Diagon Alley. Choosing the first one there, Erinn entered in and floo'd herself over to Diagon with a quick rush of air billowing up around her.

Not overly fond of the feeling of flooing, it took her a moment to stumble forward into the Leaky Cauldron and gather her mind enough to head out into the streets of Diagon. There were a lot of people around, given it was the holidays, so she found herself avoiding the majority of them and walking wherever people were not. Unfortunately for Erinn, there was usually a reason that people avoided certain areas. A fact which anyone else probably would have picked up on and quickly made their journey back into the more respectable areas of the town. However, Erinn did not. In fact, Erinn was happy enough to juts keep walking and adventuring her way down the alley that, to be honest, she had never even seen before in her life. That didn't seem to deter her efforts, though, and not even that made her turn back around.

Even as the normal looking people stopped appearing and the people started to turn strange, Erinn didn't have a problem with it. She simply continued on until she found herself in a small shop, filled with, well, she wasn't even sure what half of the things were. The shopkeeper seemed to be busy at work, arguing back and forth with one of his clients over something or other, so Erinn slipped around back and started to explore. Even if this wasn't yet super exciting, the fact that she was adventuring into a place she had never been was kind of fun. Spotting a cage over in the back of the store that contained something rather large and shimmering, Erinn started towards it with an interested tilt to her head. Cats weren't shiny, so she wasn't entirely sure what it could be. To Erinn, that didn't mean she should be cautious and not investigate, it meant that she needed to walk straight over to the cage and prod at the animal inside.

Most animals don't take all too kindly to getting pushed at in their sleep, dragons especially. In a matter of moments, the head of the creature had reared back and shot towards Erinn's hand, sinking it's fangs into it with a loud rumble. At that point, the shopkeeper was already on his way to the back corner, shouting and making quite the ruckus. After her initial scream of shock, Erinn went oddly silent, simply looking at the dragon on her hand with a look of surprise. The shopkeeper drew his wand, blasting a few quick spells at the dragon and causing it to drop her hand. Taking one look at her hand, the shopkeeper muttered a string of curses under his breath before holding onto her and apparating out of the shop. Despite her unlucky tussle with the dragon, she was at least lucky that the man didn't seem to want her to die over it and gladly transported her to St. Mungo's. Though, as soon as he dropped her off in the lobby, he had apparated away so as not to bring questions about himself.

At that point, Erinn honestly wasn't sure what, exactly, to do. Her hand was swelling up considerably and her body was starting to feel numb as the venom from the dragon's fangs started to spread throughout her system. Tottering over to the front desk, she gave the woman a sheepish grin and stuck out her arm. "I think I got bit," she added, just in case the woman was confused as to what was going on. Erinn clearly needed quick attention to her hand and the woman was instantly a flurry of action, calling different people to come down as quickly as was possible. Not wanting to be up on her feet much longer, since Erinn rather felt like she would simply fall over, the young girl loped over towards the waiting room chairs and slid down into one with a light harrumph. Even if it was possibly painful (she couldn't entirely tell because of the poison) she was quite alright with how her day was going. At the very least, it was far more interesting than the last week and a half had been.

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