i can never leave the past behind PV Lin Inkwarden

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Evgenia couldn't imagine having even one sibling. She had always wondered what it would be like if her parents hadn't divorced when she was so young - or at all. Sometimes she had even thought a sibling would be nice - but she still couldn't quite imagine having one. Her mother had never remarried and probably wasn't ever going to, and even if Papa and Susanna did have children, Zhenya certainly wouldn't be seeing them very much (much less living in the same house).
"I figure skate," she explained to Lin. The girl had fixed her robes and her hair - Zhenya had seen no problem with how they had been before, but maybe Lin was just satisgying some excited or nervous energy. "I've been skating since I was five, and I'm training to place in the British international junior team when I turn thirteen. I . . . would actually rather be back home instead of here because of it. Skating is my favourite thing in the world, and my mama had to pretty much force me to come here." She thought she would like Hogwarts, but she loved skating more, and this directly interfered with the one thing she could never give up. "I spend my weekdays at school and then Mama picks me up and takes me straight to the rink. But Hogwarts doesn't seem to have one, or at least not that I've found yet." That would be a huge problem. The absence of an ice rink was probably what scared Zhenya the most about attending this school. "I like to be outside too. Outside is so colourful!" And she desperately wanted a cat someday. Mama had never let Evgenia persuade her to get a pet, and Papa and Susanna had none. "I loved walking in the gardens back home. They usually habe yellow-flag iris and that is one of my favourites."

_{@Lin Inkwarden}

Mentioning her family got Lin thinking about them for a second longer than usual, it was just the first day, she actually saw them just this morning before the train but she was already starting to miss them too, she wondered how Wyatt was doing or how the dogs back home must feel without her, not now, it isn't a time to get emotional.
"Whaat..." Lin muttered with amazement filling her eyes and spilling in her expression, staring at the girl with her mouth half open into a smile as she explained her routine.
"Thats amazing! I've only seen that in videos or the tv! Like in the olympic games, right?" Lin asked while leaning towards the girl and resting her hands in her forearm out of excitement. "You could be in the tv someday, of course you have to practice a lot..."
Now that the girl mentioned something like an ice rink, Lin instantly placed it in her mental list of "things to look for" while walking around the castle, she was sure to do a lot of exploring, hopefully there was one somewhere? Her list was pretty long already, considering she was looking for a cool tree, the highest point she could climb and the prettiest color she could find in nature around here.
"I have no idea what those are... But they sound pretty! I also love being outside, is my... Second favorite thing after being with my friends, you see."
She declared with certain pride, hoping to get to speak more with the girl even if they seemed to have different hobbies and even houses, being with new different people was the whole point of this school for Lin.

date . [ September, 2026 ]
word count. [ 280 ]
tags . [ #Meeting ]
with. @Evgenia Starkova

_{banner by Lily McCoire}

Zhenya nodded, grinning a bit again at Lin's enthusiasm. "Yes, like the Olympic Games. It's a lot of work for a lot of years, but I'm confident I could make it. It would be quite exciting to be able to reach that level." She grinned wider at Lin's mention of loving friends and being outside. "I agree. Being outside is amazing. And yellow-flag irises are a yellow flower that are native to Scotland; they grow in several gardens around my home so I get to see them a lot." She noted Lin's attentive posture and excited facial expression. "I like to do my off-ice stretches and exercises outside in the spring and summer, because outside is just much better then. The flowers are blooming and the air is fresh." Mama had never been particularly fond of that, but Evgenia had always persisted regardless. "Unless it's raining. I don't like standing in the rain." She had nothing against storms - sometimes she came across really pretty photographs of them - but she didn't like getting soaked by bucketfuls of water. "And the butterflies! I love butterflies. They're so pretty." She had used to love to chase them when she was really little, trying to get them to land on her fingers.

_{@Lin Inkwarden}

Lin gave an entusiastic nod back, along with a softl calpping of her hands, still a little stained with the dinner they just had.
"Mhm, I believe in you, I haven't even see you skate but Im sure you're great, you have that... Look in you." She said very confident in her "witch's eye", thats simply the way her Mom calls her intuition.
She couldn't stop smiling after finding common ground between them, surely Lin always forgot to stretch before their adventures but both loved being outside anyway.
"Right? I specially love autumn because its so fresh and the animals are starting to get fat for winter!" She said with a laugh while hitting her own abdomen, recalling vividly the memory of a fat beat she saw once close to her town doing the same.
"I love butterflies too... But moths are a lot more common where I live, we found thousands of them!" She said smiling, suddenly feeling a little sad about not having her camera to show the girl said moths, most of which were captured on camera only. "I wonder what kind of bugs live around here? Have you seen any?" She finally asked while swinging her legs on the bench, lifting them a little to avoid the floor to play.

date . [ September, 2026 ]
word count. [ 215 ]
tags . [ #making friends ]
with. @Evgenia Starkova

_{banner by Lily McCoire}

Zhenya couldn't help but smile at Lin's encouragement and enthusiasm. It was nice to meet such a person - vibrant and clearly very kind, able to make probably anyone smile. "Thank you."
She laughed when Lin mentioned fat animals, the words not what she would expect as someone's favourite part of autumn. "Yes, my mama likes autumn the best too. She says the air is crisper than spring and summer yet not quite as crisp as it sometimes gets in winter. I don't usually notice it, but she's insisted on it since I can remember." Mama liked to take long walks outside after work in the autumn, usually while Evgenia skated at the rink. "I cannot personally testify to seeing particularly fat animals, though." She hummed a bit, considering Lin's butterfly mention and bug question. "I see a lot of painted lady butterflies back home! Their caterpillars eat thistle. And I really haven't been looking for bugs specifically since I got here, but I think I saw a little butterfly! Other than that, I don't know." Maybe Evgenia and Lin would get more chances to see bugs here? "There's probably some pretty interesting ones." Bug hunting wasn't something Zhenya usually did back home, though she always liked seeing random ones on plants or in flight. "Maybe weird wizard ones?" That was only half a joke. She wouldn't be too surprised if there did turn out to be some kind of weird insect only wizards knew about . . .

_{@Lin Inkwarden}

Lin was, honestly, being very tame and speaking rather softly compared to her usual ways. Her sisters helped her "train" a little bit to make sure she got friends in the new school, or at lesst didn't bother anyone, hopefully the training was working perfectly.

"The air gets crispier...?" She muttered, staring intensely at the girl before shrugging and nodding like she got it, which she didn't, at least she never noticed either but she would attest that the humidity eas different, maybe thats what the lady meant. "Your mom sounds very smart." She said off handed before being instantly distracted at the mention of bugs.

"Ohh... How pretty! I catch bugs all the time. Well, most of the time is them catching me, they like to land on my hair a lot." She said with a solemn nod, almost like it was obviously a priviledge from earth. "Actually yes! My mom says theres plenty of wizard... Only bugs." She said with a small confused look, unsure on how to word it properly but brushing it off just as quick.

"I only know the magical fireflies, we play with them all the time when they are in season." She explained with a bit of a mischievous sparkle in her eyes as she raised one hand to make a shaking motion. "They grow up instantly when you shake them! Mom says we are helping at raising them, we spent whole nights doing it sometimes..."

date . [September 2026]
word count. [ 245 ]
tags . [ #making friends? ]
with. @Evgenia Starkova

_{banner by Lily McCoire}

Zhenya grinned happily, her green eyes shifting over their surroundings momentarily. The noise in the hall had faded into the background for her, but she was still very aware of its presence. The other students filling the hall didn't look like they were planning on leaving any time soon. "Bugs land on me all the time. Midges don't really like me a lot, but they love my mama. She gets very annoyed with them." She gave a theatrical shudder at the thought of her mother yelling at the tiny midges they could barely even see. "Where I live there are lots of city gardens, and a few houses have gardens too. So there are a lot of bees and other bugs that get attracted to them."
Zhenya's brows flew up at the mention of "wizard-only" bugs, then of magical fireflies. "Hmm. Shaking them seems counter-intuitive . . . but, then again, I guess they're magic. A lot of things about magic seem counter-intuitive to me, and I haven't even had that much exposure to it yet." A bit of Zhenya's Russian accent was beginning to slip out to mingle with the Scottish. She began to drum the fingers of one hand on the table, every inch of her body itching to be moving around on the ice. "Are you from a wizard family, then? You seem to have at least some familiarity with wizard things." Inwardly, she really really hoped that she wasn't seeming completely ignorant in front of Lin. Of course, Zhenya was completely ignorant concerning anything wizard, but she wasn't a fan of the idea of coming off as stupid with all her questions and her total unfamiliarity. "Ignorance makes fools of all men," Mama had said to Zhenya several times over the years, or at least that was the closest translation into English. Evgenia knew that she wasn't a fool - normally - but her ignorance of anything wizardly could make her one, especially in regards to the classes, and she was all too aware of it.

_{@Lin Inkwarden}

Lin was arguably more at home wherever there was noise, lots of it, even now the only thing that made her aware of all the sound around them was the moment when they started to die down a little, as the older students started to leave and conversations settle into slightly less excited chat than before. It reminded her of that exactmoment in the afternoon that always arrived with her friends back home, when everyone was tired but not tired enough to call it a day yet.

"What's a midges?" She muttered with curiosity while envisioning very vividly the things the girl described, living in a city sounds doable as long as there were city gardens for sure. "That sounds coool... Bees are everywhere, thats what matters! Back home everywhere is a garden, really..." She mentioned while thinking back if they ever had the concept of garden, they did buy not like hers, probably, for Lin a garden was the place you chose outside to plant potatoes and carrots.

"Oh! Not really!" Lin chuckled while feeling almost proud for the question, it meant she at least didn't seem that clueless about everything. "Only my mom is a witch, an amazing one at that! She told me things here and there, you see... But I only really remember the things about the outside." She admited like it was obvious, anyone who spoke with her about 3 minutes would get to that conclusion too, as the outside is the most important thing for Lin. "For example... Did you know there's a kind of magical tree that fights? They have one here at Hogwarts!

date . [ September, 2026 ]
word count. [ 270 ]
tags . [ #friendship? ]
with. @Evgenia Starkova

_{banner by Lily McCoire}

"Midges are . . . little tiny biting insects," Evgenia started, fishing around in her brain for a good verbal description. "They're really annoying. Their bites hurt and they bite a lot. We didn't really have a huge midge problem at home, though. Just sometimes in the summer evenings they come out and they make nuisances of themselves." She grinned at Lin's mention of bees. "Yes, bees are so funny to watch. I used to sometimes sit and watch them in the summers and try to count how many I saw in an hour." That had been when she was pretty little, though. Before she had started really dedicating herself to hours of training every single day. After that, Evgenia had had little to no time to watch the bees on warm summer afternoons because she would be spending those afternoons at the local rink learning spins and jumps and practicing footwork.
She raised her brows when Lin mentioned a magical 'fighting tree'. "It . . . fights? How? What kind of fighting?" She tried to picture such a scene, a tree with one branch curling around a sword or knife and jabbing it violently at random passersby. "I have never heard of such a thing." She wondered what it would be like to grow up with a magical person for a parent. Imagining Mama as a witch was downright laughable, and though Evgenia had visited her father several times, she really didn't know enough about him to properly imagine him as being able to do magic. She had been told both her parents were 'Muggles', anyway. No magical lineage at all whatsoever for either of them. And her father still didn't know she'd gone away.

_{@Lin Inkwarden}