Pensive Pals and Questions Answered PV Fin.

Noah was walking around the corridors of Hogwarts, it was almost lunchtime and he decided it was a good time for a stroll, better than sitting and letting his thoughts consume him. Although walking didn't help much, at least it made him feel like he was doing something. After the announcement about the gates, Noah spent a lot of his time thinking about what he could do, trying to figure out how he could somehow help out but he had no idea. That was all he really thought about now, he was still doing his schoolwork but it definitely was getting much harder to focus.

But his previous thoughts still lingered, for the first day after the announcement, his head was clear, he wanted to help Hogwarts somehow. But slowly, his thoughts about personally wanting to have fun and do cool things like everyone else was... it was still there, and he hated that. Was all of this not enough to prove to his mind that this was not a time to be having fun of all things?

And then suddenly he jumped and took a step back as some random girl approached him and asked him what had to be the weirdest question he had been asked by some other student (although the list was, admittedly, very small). His face didn't take too long to revert back to his normal state but there was a lingering sense of curiosity within them now, he was intrigued by the question. He didn't much care about who the person was or the fact that it was kind of weird, his brain was simply trying to process a reply to her question.

It did take him a good few seconds, he was looking at her but not really, he had zoned out, thinking about it, how he deals with the severity of it all? Why wasn't he scared to his wits? He wasn't thinking as much about the danger he was in as he was about what he had to do next, why did it not bother him that he might as well be dead soon? It was a rather interesting question, one he didn't have a quick answer to.

His eyes narrowed as he started to speak, "Well, I think it's just the..." his gaze diverted to different places as he tried to think of what exactly he was trying to say, "It's just like not exactly sure that anything like that will happen... Or something like that." Every few words, he would pause and bite his lips as he thought of how frame his next sentence, "Like, I feel like nothing of that sort will be possible for me or my family... I... I think it's just stupid to think I'm going to die or anything... It's just like, too early for something like that, same goes for my family, it just doesn't feel like it's going to happen, I really doubt it will."

It probably didn't come off right, he wasn't sure how to explain what he felt, it just wasn't something he even considered as an issue. Maybe it was how naive he was, maybe it was just intuition, it didn't logically make sense for him to be in direct danger, did it? He wasn't sure why it didn't bother him, but it just didn't, somehow.

The boy took several seconds before replying. Ana assumed it was because he needed time to process her question as well as think of an answer. She supposed it wasn't something that most people spent a great deal of time thinking about, since it was rather morbid as well as uncomfortable. Ana wasn't someone who liked to acknowledge to fact that she wasn't invincible, much less that she was inevitably going to die somehow someday. However, since the Blossom Ball she could think of little else. No matter what she did to try to force herself to turn her attention to other things, her thoughts always seemed to drift back to this subject. She hoped that, maybe, if she actually talked about it with someone else, she could finally get the subject off her mind. It wasn't something she much liked thinking about in general, and she really didn't enjoy it being on her mind 24/7.

Pressing her lips together, she listened to his reply. She didn't much like his approach of simply ignoring it. True, there wasn't exactly anything that Ana could do about the fact that she and everyone she knew and loved would die some day, but surely there had to be something she could do about dealing with the fact. "I suppose that works," Ana said, wrinkling her brow. "But I mean, we're all going to die. Not necessarily in a bad or painful way, but you, me, and everyone we know are all just going to be gone one day. I just can't help but feel like there's got to be something we can do. Not to stop death or delay it or anything, but just make our lives mean something. Because in all likely hood, in 200 years or so, nobody will remember either or us or even know that this conversation happened."

As she contemplated the boy's words as well as her own, it occurred to her that she had absolutely no idea who she was talking to. Furthermore, she had rather ambushed him with her odd question. "Good Lord, you must think me absolutely mad. I promise I'm not mad or some freak who strolls the halls constantly thinking about death. I don't even particularly like this subject," she informed him. Well, she did think about it constantly, but that was a fairly new development, not something that she considered to actually be a personality trait. "I'm Anastasia by the way."

She extended her hand as she introduced herself. As she waited to see what his response to what she had said as well as her introduction, she noted that he had rather interesting eyes. There was something about them that looked quite pensive and thoughtful. She didn't liked being pensive mostly because her thoughts tended to be rather dark and depressing, so she typically had a friend or homework or a book or something to distract her from her thoughts.

Anastasia nodded slightly as he introduced himself. He definitely thought she was insane, but then again, the same could be said for most of the students. Honestly, the ones who weren't fascinated by death were either violent or traumatized enough that they didn't speak to many other people. As a side note, she wondered why on Earth parents would continue to send their children to a school where so much of the student body was either traumatized or traumatizing others. As far as she knew, things like this had been happening for ages, so there wasn't really an argument to be made that they were just unaware of the dangers. Anyone who had gone to Hogwarts or even spent much time in European wizarding society knew that the safety of Hogwarts was highly questionable at absolute best. She couldn't imagine what the muggle parents knew or thought about Hogwarts. Maybe they were ignorant of the dangers or if their children wrote, maybe they just thought the danger was normal for wizards. Food for thought...

"You're in the same year as me, right? Second-year, I mean," Ana said, trying to pivot from the morbid discussion. He really hadn't given her any further insight into the issue, which was alright since it was a weird subject, and she didn't want to gain a reputation for being a weirdo who ran around talking to strangers about death. If they had introduced themselves to one another, did that still count as strangers? She supposed it did since she hadn't known his name when she had ambushed him with her odd question.

As she waited for a reply to her lastest question, she absently twisted a strand of loose hair around her finger. She wondered how she would feel if some random person had confronted her with a question like that. She probably would have ignored them or told them they were insane. That spoke promisingly of this boy since he hadn't told her to bugger off with her crazy.

Ana nodded slightly when he said he had to go get lunch. While it was in fact lunchtime, she also thought that a desire to get away from the crazy death girl was a factor. "I won't keep you then," she said before turning and going back to her bench and her book. The boy had seemed rather awkward, so it seemed to her that the chances of him mentioning any of this encounter to anyone were fairly slim. That was just as well.

Settling back into her seat, she opened her book and tried to get back into the story. It wasn't very interesting, and after a few minutes, she decided to abandon the endeavor altogether. She closed the dull tome and stashed it in her bookbag. Her thoughts drifted back to the entire stupid subject she'd been thinking about in the first place, which was irritating. She didn't actually want to continue thinking about death and all that, so she opted to go inside and maybe go to her first class after lunch a bit early. Overall, this was probably one of the more odd lunch breaks that she'd had in a while. No matter, seeing as it was over.

Anastasia Beckett has exited this thread.

Noah wasn't too good with reading people, something he had only realised later on at Hogwarts, it made it ever scarier for him to interact with anyone. But even he couldn't help but think she took his statement as more of a "Leave me alone" or something. Well, wasn't really his job to fix that, he just let out a quiet sigh and turned around, walking off towards the great hall. He probably could've handled it better but nothing bad had actually happened so it was alright, but it just reminded him further that he really needed to figure out how to deal with people, it was probably going to cost him later if he kept avoiding it entirely.

But oh well, he had time for that later, as of now, he had just esca- oh no, that again made it sound bad, no, he had just finished a... conversation? That counts for something. And it wasn't that weird, really, just abrupt, besides, he did have a proper reason to leave, it wasn't like he had made an excuse, he was genuinely late for lunch, what was he going to do anyway? What would a normal person do? Would they sacrifice lunch just to talk to some person, especially one they didn't know well?

...Probably not? He really had no idea, or maybe he was just looking too much into it. Probably it, yeah. Just go and get lunch, he could think about it later, although it probably would be just as unproductive.