@pulchrxclade
“Are you attempting to prove Xenny right by looking like a skittle-fisk? Or is this a new way of training?”
Pandora stared at them rather oddly, her head offering a gentle tilt as she kept her arms crossed in front of her. “I don’t know what skittle-fisks look like, but I suppose Xenny doesn’t know either given he hasn’t mentioned their description in the Quibbler yet.” In a way, this was her way of teasing, though, her ability not to break character often made people wonder if she was serious.
“Professor Dumbledore would probably prefer we do things indoors as to not be so obvious. At least, that’s what I was told after I blew up that tree last week.”
—
Frank hadn’t done anything wrong—or so he thought, at least until he was greeted by Pandora on his way through. He literally just got there, but clearly he had either looked very conspicuous or very suspicious or both. There were a couple of things he wanted to do to try and help out, especially with the Order members who are worried about being next. Although—Frank had thought worrying about it was silly. It was easier to just assume you were next, and it was a time like this that sharpened one’s survival skills. Frank didn’t want anymore of his friends to be statistics in this war, not if he could help it. He was going around making his off-duty visits, just to make sure that everyone was up to speed regarding their protective charms.
If anything, Frank would rather have everyone in a classroom and teach them how to properly duel, but only Marlene had really wanted to work on duelling. Maybe this moment was Frank would do more for the Order, reach out more and see if anyone else wanted to do something more.
It took a moment to parse the gibberish that Pandora had spattered at him, but she hadn’t exactly been shy either. She definitely knew what she was talking about, even if he didn’t understand was a skittle-something was. Or at least it sounded like it, that she had an absolute confidence in her knowledge of what it was.
But before Frank could understand what a skittle-something was, she started talking about how she didn’t know what it looked like—and that maybe Xenophiliius didn’t know either. He couldn’t hide his bewildered expression, unsure of what she was trying to get at and forgetting how chatty she had been. Or maybe she just wanted to catch him by surprise.
“If we don’t know what it looks like, what exactly does it do?” Frank asked. He wasn’t a magizoologist, but he imagined that maybe he could come up with what it could maybe look like if there was a purpose to it. He considered himself one of the few to really take the Lovegoods seriously—or at least enough that the Quibbler wasn’t something that immediately went into the trash when the owl delivered it.
His playful tone broke the tension a bit, or enough that he felt a little less… stressed, even after the McKinnons had been murdered. There were a few sparks of hope that Frank hoped to protect, and he wondered how the Lovegoods would fare during the war. “And that poor tree—I’m sure Dumbledore’s so concerned about the shrubbery. What did it do to you that it deserved being set on fire?”