Wings that Keep Your Heart in the Clouds

Ducky was having an absolute wondrous time with Ellery, and if she knew that, it would only serve to annoy her more. Which was the very reason why he plastered a hearty smile across his cheeks. His insults had gotten to her, he was pleased to note, and smiling only added injury to it. She flinched her broom towards her and he gave a willing cheek, ready to actually feel the sting, but he had guessed that she was bluffing.

Good thing too. He didn’t need to add a sore face to all the injuries he had gotten this afternoon.

She began ranting and he pulled a face of great hurt onto his face, though his eyes shined with laughter. This whole conversation-wrestling-match-combination was just too fun. And everyone who knew Ducky knew that he lived for fun. With his mock shock forming his lips into an o, he said, “Language, Miss Dixon! That is not the gentlewomanly thing to do at all. I am shocked, I am appalled, and frankly, you owe my previously unsoiled ears an apology.”

She apologized for hurting him and he tilted his head, frowning sympathetically. “Aww, so sweet.” He smirked and kicked out a leg, attempting to crumple her knee and take her down again.

Ellery was infuriated, but it was getting her nowhere. He wasn't leaving or even hinting about when he would. It was like anything reaction she tried to get out of him would turn completely opposite of the intended. And it was tiring - completely tiring. She took in a deep breath somewhere amid all this, but it did not soothe her nor did it make her feel any less frustrated.

His reply to her apology made her hands tense with more irritation. She wanted to hit him again. Ellery clenched her jaw to keep a sharp remark from slipping out and instead just breathed in and out  before saying, "Well, I should get goi--" followed by a screech of surprise. The whole world spun for a moment before her hands and knees both met the ground once more. She was well aware that he had just kicked her knee to watch her topple to the ground. She picked one hand up to try and push her hair back to glare at him. "What the bloody hell!'


[ooc]super short, but i wasn't sure where you wanted to go after he kicks her down again x)[/ooc]

Not only did he catch her by surprise, but he brought her down in the middle of a sentence as well. Victory was absolutely the sweetest. As she fell to the ground, he lept up, scrambling onto his hands and knees to recover the ground between them. And, again, he was on top of her, a leg swung on either side, arms straight, hands encircling her wrists. It would take a low blow to get him off of her now.

Why was he being so persistent with Little Miss Dixon? Besides the usual overriding Ducky-Does-What-He-Wants attitude, of course, the motivations behind why he would be annoying Ellery were very few and far between. Surely it was not just boredom, but some particular interest in getting Ellery to react to him. She was one of the more reactionary people he had come into contact with, so he could go on believing it was reasons closer to that, than reasons about her. She was pretty, after all.

He smiled down at her. “I’ll let you go, on one condition, Celery-Ellery.” He smiled, leaning down and whispering into her ear. “Tell me a secret.”

((Hope you don't mind the godmode))

Ellery let out a huff. It was hard to admit defeat. While her mind was persistent on not admitting so, it would seem her body had already begun to. She tried forcing her arms up, using all her muscles she thought could possibly aid in lifting the heavy duck off of her. Alas, here she was. Stuck beneath him like a bird in a cage. Ellery quite enjoyed birds, truthfully. She had always regretted bringing a cat to Hogwarts instead of an owl. Now she wished that she was a bird, so that she could peck at his eyes until he left her be. The odds of suddenly being able to morph into a bird, though, was highly unlikely - impossible, really. Ellery had never practiced toward doing such things.

Her eyes glared up at his obnoxiously happy face. She could feel the ground below her, colder than the summer air around them, but hard on her back. Completely uncomfortable, really. She should have flown high and far as soon as she had picked up her broom. "I take it back, Duck. I'm glad I hit your head." Her voice was much calmer than how she felt. "Just too bad it didn't knock some sense into that thick skull of your's." Ellery's eyes hardened, just to make it clear that she wasn't happy.

As he leaned down and spoke into her ear, Ellery's head and neck tried shying away. The breath on her ear tickled and left it cold as the warm air from his words dissipated. "A secret?" Now her face was more of a pondering than a hard anger. Her irritation set back in, though. "What, you want to hear about my home life? Is that it?" Her heart was thudding a little faster. She didn't enjoy talking about her personal life. It was something she preferred to avoid by focusing on school instead. Ellery did not have much secrets as much as she just had a lot of missing information from the minds of other people. Where is she from? Who is her family? Why doesn't she get letters from home except once in a long while?

Ellery's anger eased and so did her muscles. They relaxed underneath Ducky's grips and she let out a long breath she hadn't realized she had been holding in. If anything, her look became a bit sadder. "Alright, I'll tell you one. Just..." She was closer to mumbling now. "Don't ask questions." Ellery took a long drawn-out breath. She wasn't sure if this counted as a secret. Weren't secrets supposed to be things people did, not felt? As she let out her breath, she quietly admitted, "My older brother is the only family member I still love." Ellery immediately averted her eye's from his face. She didn't want to see pity or over-dramatized sympathy. Her eyes landed on his shirt collar, but she then decided that maybe that was awkward and instead moved her head to look at his wrist that assisted his hand in holding her own wrist down. She cleared her throat a bit. "Could you at least let me sit up if that doesn't count? I don't like getting dirty."

Struggle all she might, Ducky was just not letting ellery Dixon escape him - not this time anyway. If she planning on getting up again, he would have to consent for it to be so. That was the way it was going to have to be and he was practically giddy. His cheeky smile widely displayed his own pleasure at having found himself in this advantageous position, his posture loose and confident despite the tight hold he had her in.

She was obviously aware of her own change in circumstance and he wobbled his head with pride, grinning wider when she expressed her great desire for him to have suffered the concussion he would claim to have later in the week to get out of homework. It would not work, of course, but he was going to enjoy the look on Ellery's face when he announced to the entire class that he could not finish his Potion because Ellery Dixon hit me so hard that I think I'm having brain trauma. He would be setting himself up to be the butt of a joke, but it would piss off Ellery. And that was reward enough.

"Aye, lass, but me skull be impervious to sense," Ducky responded, taking on a pirate accent for the pure and simple hell of it. What was life without a sense of silliness?

He grinned. "Yes, a secret." She spoke again and his immediate response was "Yes," but he wished he could take it back a moment later. There might have been a flicker of uncertainty but it was soon gone. Mostly... Ducky just hated being reminded that families had any bearing on who a person was. If it was true for everyone else... then it must be true for him. He hated the idea that his family at all influenced who he was as a person, and for that reason he would have preferred anything else from Ellery.

But before he could stop her, she was talking about her brother. Ducky hated to admit that his plan had backfired. He had wanted a secret he could tease her about, or supericially bond with her on. Something like an embarrassing story, or some uncertainty regarding school so he could poke fun or sympathize with, respectively. He did not want real, because that meant getting real on his own family issues. That was more than he bargained for.

So, smile gone, jest out of his features, he slid off Ellery and hopped up to his feet. He strolled away, leaving her to stand or sit or do whatever he wanted. He stared out at the pitch before becoming aware that he was sure to arouse suspicion from the fiesty Gryffindor. He turned around and smiled at the girl, thrusting his hands into his pockets and rocking back and forth. Merlin, was he good at seeming happy. "I think I've bugged you enough for one day, yeah?"