To Be Fair and True Solo Finished

Backdated: March 16th, 2020
Referencing: A Simple Request

Studying and wandering around were the only things Flash ever seemed to do anymore. He had a lot of thinking to do, and before recently, he had been too depressed to even think. After he talked to Ross and Opeila, a few things had started to become more clear to him. Even though the information in the books he had read were useful and accurate, his application of them was failing him miserably. Another example of the deceptive nature of truth. The authors of those books likely didn’t expect a 12-year-old Hogwarts student to be using them to try and influence his fellow students and gain a positive reputation. His brother Val, too, likely didn’t expect Flash to take the advice he had given to blackmail other first years.

He had drastically misunderstood the meaning of control and power. In the books he read, they were only ever described as something desirable. Having power over people was not like the flip of a switch, one didn’t actually ever completely control someone else. Not without using an unforgivable curse. He still wanted control, he still felt like it belonged in his hands, but he had to accept that without love, one could never understand another person. He had to stop seeing people as pawns in a game he was playing, and stop grabbing for power at random.

It was a difficult lesson to learn, one that required falling down before he could get back up. It had been painful, but it was because of other people pulling him back up that he didn’t sink to the bottom. He had to make more connections that were like those-- ones he could rely on sincerely, rather than ones that came from obligation to him. He had a lot more practice to go through before he could understand it fully. He ought to have learned it before it was too late, before he lost the most influential friendship of all.

In the evening after classes, Flash did his usual routine of looking up more information about the information he learned from the day. He also had a bit of catching up to do, given that he had been struggling with his homework while under the influence of the darkness in his heart. It had only been a minor roadblock in the end, life moved ever on, as if not noticing his heartbreak in the slightest. He was used to the anticlimactic feeling by now, of enduring suffering ending with a return to the status quo.

If when his bedroom door was opened and he wasn’t quiet and well-behaved, it would shut again. It was more agreeable to everyone if he just got over it.

That was at least how he was feeling before the beating of wings down the hallways swooped into the library. He watched the owl swoop overhead and drop a letter square on the open book he was looking at only to perch on a high shelf to preen a bit before continuing back to the owlery.

At first, Flash was mildly alarmed. He didn’t receive many letters that he didn’t expect, and with recent events he feared someone he hurt might be trying to get revenge on him. Instead, unopening the letter revealed something that fully alarmed him. It was a letter from Willow. One that said she wanted to talk. There was something else, scratched out heavily.

Roll to read scribbled out message (Wisdom):
DC (average) = 10
1d20(4) + 8 = 12 (success)

She missed me? It brought all of the emotions back into him, almost too many to hold in his body. He missed her too, so much that he clutched the letter to his chest, wincing as if in pain. He had tried not to think about her too much, lest he spiral back into that dark room, but with the promise of a meeting in the morning, he let the memories play on repeat in his mind. He would get to taste that tea Willow had picked out for him again, get to talk to her.

It had to have been Ross coming through for him. He couldn’t believe it had worked, it only solidified the new path that he was trying to tread. He would have to thank Ross properly for the gift he had given him, a chance to try to explain himself.

For the rest of the evening he could hardly think of anything else.