AN: This was written for Round 5 for the QFL.

Prompt: Cowardice—but in a character who did not display it in the books.

Wordcount: 1,013

Content warnings: Survivor's guilt for Demelza, but nothing graphic

Demelza Robins was supposed to be above running and hiding. She was sorted into Gryffindor, she was supposed to be as brave and bold as the national symbol of England. She felt the golden lion pendant beneath her jumper and a surge of guilt made her stomach churn.

This wasn't fair.

She knew she wasn't supposed to be here, lying on her back in the bleachers of the Quodpot stadium with her Walkman, the night before her first match at Ilvermorny.

They had left Britain, after the events of last June.

"It's too dangerous," her father had declared, sorrow misting over the gray eyes that Demelza had inherited. "If Hogwarts was breached, if Dumbledore was killed. . . Then nowhere is safe in Britain."

Instead of arguing, insisting on her education being completed, she had said nothing. She did not know what to say, her tongue struggled to move, her lips could not form the words as much as a part of her, a voice within her head, screamed at her to do something.

Even now, there were a million things she should have, could have said. At night she played them over and over again in her head, picturing all the ways she could have convinced her father to stay, if she had found the courage.

But she hadn't.

Why had it been so hard? A cruel part of her whispered that whenever there was silence, whenever the music wasn't playing. There were too many silences in America for that voice to whisper in.

But it had a point—she'd never had difficulty speaking her mind before. She was never blunt or cruel or overly contrary with her words. Her father did raise her to be polite, after all. But she had no problem making her opinions heard.

And yet, when her father had been waiting for her on Platform 9 and 3/4, the day after Dumbledore's funeral at Hogwarts, she did not make hers heard.

You know why, that cruel part of her whispered. She was overwhelmed, afraid after the school had been attacked in the night, when she and the rest of the students were supposed to be safe in their beds. Everyone said that Hogwarts was supposed to be one of the safest places in the Wizarding World—in Wizarding Britain, anyway. But evil had somehow found their way in close to the solstice, a night similar to Hallow's Eve in the significance to magical world. Like monsters under the bed and in the closet, they came in and killed the Wizarding World's best defender against said evil.

If Dumbledore was dead, who could stop You-Know-Who?

Demelza had been so tired when she came home that afternoon, so afraid—that she couldn't bring herself to fight. She should have, and a part of her meant to contest it later, in a less public place. But the next few days were a whirlwind.

Many others had similar ideas to the Robinses. It was hard to find anyone that would buy their family manor, it was difficult to pull all of her talented technomancer siblings away from their jobs and commissions. They would find more work in America, and they had. But work had a way of pulling you in, as does any mundanity in life, Demelza supposed.

She was busy packing, writing letters to all her friends to say goodbye. She could have made a fuss then—but she didn't.

Maybe because she liked the idea of a new start. After all, she hadn't heard of any dark wizards taking over America since Grindelwald's reign of terror, nearly fifty years ago. The Aurors were more powerful, more well-respected there, according to her father.

The MACUSA would keep them safer than the Ministry or the Order of the Phoenix had. They never had to rely on a pack of schoolchildren to save the world.

The idea that Demelza could go somewhere where she could be a child, a carefree schoolgirl was a siren's song, too alluring to resist.

She could play sports at Ilvermorny, her father had told her when giving her the brochures, from which a diverse group of students smiled, waved, and laughed. Not Quidditch, but Quodpot wasn't so different, he assured her. She would make friends, could focus on her grades—and she could let the world burn.

When her father said that, Demelza's stomach churned again, the doubts returning with all the force of a raging blizzard like the ones around Christmas at Hogwarts.

She'd been a member of the DA, after all. She'd trained to fight dark wizards because just two years ago, she was sure that she would have to. Her mother had been a member of the Order, her father a public supporter of Dumbledore—and the Ministry had been doing nothing.

She'd been a scared little girl, then, too, looking for a sword or a weapon or anything to defend herself with. The only reason she went looking, she'd come to realize, was only because no one was coming.

So when someone did come—or rather, something, that being the Atlantic Ocean's distance— she was all too eager to fling her sword to the side and let others do the fighting.

So she said nothing, and nodded as her father went on about the academic opportunities at Ilvermorny in the way that only parents could.

When she was Sorted at Ilvermorny, that only further twisted the knife. On that first night, she stepped into the circular tower, where the moonlight shone through the roof and the carvings chose her.

Or rather, the Wampus roared and swished its tail in approval.

She was a warrior—that was what that meant.

But she wasn't, not really, Demelza had come to realize as she lay there, reaching out for the fireflies hovering in the heavy evening air, summer not yet gone. She might have been, once.

But she was a coward, first and foremost, leaving her friends to fight and die in Britain.

And she was here, listening to music and thinking about Quodpot.