August 31, 2019 – 12:22 PM
Constance Sykes — Played by Lauren
They were friends. That ought to be a simple concept to grasp and Connie had never suffered for lack of friends in her life so it wasn’t as though she didn’t know how to behave herself, but it had been a long time since she had felt quite this…warm around any friend of hers and so she was struggling slightly with certain aspects of this particular friendship.
Such as keeping her hands to herself. Or staring too long, too often, too intently. It was very easily done – Carmelina Cramming was a striking woman in more ways that once – but she had very nearly given herself away entirely once before and after the mild awkwardness of the term that had followed not being entirely gone by the time summer rolled around Connie was keen not to repeat her mistake and fully intended to keep herself completely under control.
“I bought this one in Bordeaux over the summer.”
Obviously she had already failed in her mission.
“I did do other things while I was there,” she commented with a wry smile as she poured two glasses and settled back into one of the armchairs by the unlit fire in her sitting room. “But it’s the wine that stood out.” She took a sip and made an appreciative noise. “Heaven.”
September 11, 2019 – 10:53 PM
As she followed suit, Carmelina found she had to agree. “Mmm. Just what the feast was missing,” she remarked with a guilty sort of smile, eyeing the bottle in jest. Probably. “You mustn’t let me drink it all.” (One couldn’t start on the wine too early in view of the whole castle, unless one wanted to be seen squiffy halfway through the Sorting.)
The feast had also been missing this, she didn’t add, as she made herself comfortable across from Constance Sykes in the matron’s sitting room. There had hardly been time to talk, amidst all the chaos of the first feast of the year, and - well - sidelong glances along the top table were not nearly enough.
But she was on her best behaviour here, Carmelina told herself sternly, as she swilled the wine around her glass with a pensive, relaxed sort of air. It was not her fault Madam Sykes had the gall to be looking just as divine as the wine tasted, after all. “A fruitful holiday then, I take it?” She added with a grin, wondering what else Connie might have gotten up to, and whether she was as glad as Carmelina was to be back.
September 22, 2019 – 5:00 PM
Constance Sykes — Played by Lauren
Fruitful might have been pushing it. Connie had spent much of the summer doing little of worth, beyond enjoying herself immensely in her idleness and feeling very little guilt for that. In the years since she had been employed at Hogwarts she had tried to make the most of her summer adventures but after last year Connie had thought a little bit of nothing was just what was called for – especially if that nothing involved an extraordinary amount of lounging in the sunshine and sea bathing.
“Certainly a relaxing one,” Connie admitted, dancing around fully admitting quite how lazy she had been. Days spent entirely horizontal were not the sort of thing one relayed to a woman who Connie considered one of the finest minds in the wizarding world. The fact that Carmelina was here at Hogwarts working alongside her still seemed a sort of fever dream – the fact that she was also one of the most magnetic people Connie had ever had the fortune of meeting was a delicious bonus. Connie had never in her wildest imaginings thought up a scholar whose mind was so beautiful it very nearly distracted from how distractingly lovely she was in person.
“You should come with me next year,” she offered, half in jest, though she immediately flushed scarlet at the thought of her glorious, relaxing holiday adding the enticing figure of Carmelina Cramming to it. She had spent days just reading in bed, the glorious sunshine pouring through onto the thrown back, starched white covers to warm her skin as she read…Connie suspected the presence of another body would definitely distract her from her novels.
October 11, 2019 – 3:11 PM
“You’d regret that in a heartbeat,” Carmelina replied, the teasing counter mostly intended to disguise the leap of longing she felt in her chest at the merest thought that Madam Sykes would suggest spending any time together out of the castle and even possibly mean it. “I think I would quite ruin your relaxation.” Probably true, too: she had a hard enough time sitting still, never mind hijacking people’s well-deserved holidays to go touring ancient sites or digging herself into trouble of some kind or another.
But even if they spent the entire time doing nothing in a sun-flooded France, she imagined any summer spent in Constance’s company would fly by almost as impossibly fast as their first summer spent together had by way of a time-tampering ancient witch. She had a hypothesis, as yet untested but keenly held, that when it came to Connie Sykes, no time in her company was quite long enough.
“But I am sure I should enjoy it,” Carm added, once she had taken another sip of wine and held in the worst of her smirk. “After all, even last summer in Irvingly didn’t turn out so badly for us, did it?” (They had avoided near-death, at least, and the vision of Constance stepping up to that sphinx outside the church had not yet paled from Carmelina’s mind.)
December 4, 2019 – 1:08 AM
Last modified: December 4, 2019 – 1:09 AM by Constance Sykes.
Constance Sykes — Played by Lauren
Relaxation wasn’t exactly what Connie had envisioned when she thought of holidaying with Carmelina; indeed she imagined it would be a singularly traumatic experience hampered by longing, mortifying moments and she was quite sure a single glass of wine would push her into making a mistake she could not take back and Connie had never been the sort to just have one glass. It was probably for the best that at the end of the term they went their separate ways – barring the odd journey into unknown fogs that through odd twists of fate saw them sharing the front page of the newspaper.
“Apart from losing a month you mean?” Connie retorted with a wry smile at the memory: was Carmelina somehow technically the woman she had spent the longest time with in years? Lord, that was a lowering thought – though a slightly thrilling one too if she were the take the positives over the negative. “I suppose at least it was productively spent being terrified of a sphinx rather than my usual summers of avoiding my family and reading books I don’t understand,” she lifted her glass in acknowledgement towards the other woman. “Although I finally deciphered yours. Miss Scrimgeour had to help me on the finer points but I got there in the end.”
Grinning Connie took a sip of her drink and bashfully glanced over the rim.
“I don’t know how your mind copes with something as benign as teaching. Don’t you find it even a tiny bit…limiting.”
January 17, 2020 – 12:34 AM
She snorted - how terribly unladylike, she knew - at Miss Sykes’ wryness, deciding she would be quite happy to sacrifice another month of her life if it meant she could witness another momentous encounter with a sphinx, or indeed freeze this moment of a beautiful, intelligent woman talking about her book as though anyone would willingly waste their precious time on it.
One could not always tell, with her skin tone, but Carmelina could certainly feel the blush accost her. “Oh, please,” she said, waving her off with a move that nearly tipped her wine over herself, “You’ve too much patience by far for my esoteric nonsense.” She would have forgiven anyone for getting bored by the tenth page in; to think Constance Sykes would even pretend she had bothered to read it all was flattering and horrifying in equal measure.
Best not take it too literally and pick her brains for her outlook, though. She fancied that would be something of a conversation-killer. Besides, Miss Sykes was far too busy trying to unpick her motives. (Hopefully she would not look too deep.)
“What, with pupils as zealous as Miss Scrimgeour?” Carmelina teased - Constance’s Slytherins were by far the most intimidating, as a set - but then, absently swilling her glass, she lifted her eyes to Connie again, with a touch of coyness. “But no, not at all,” she said. “I should think it would be a much lonelier experience if I set off again on another expedition alone.” Though she did claim to be an independent woman, she had always had her husband’s company off on digs and tours and studies; she could not quite fathom whether it would feel at all the same now. And who was she to leave when she had barely scratched the surface of all the possibilities right here?
![[Image: jGi0wPk.png]](https://i.imgur.com/jGi0wPk.png)
