my tears ricochet PV J. Malters Reopened

@Jess Malters

The younger girl's apparent surprise in Ana's acceptance of her offer rather irritated her, and if she hadn't been in the state she was, she would have snapped at her for it. Why would she have made an offer if she didn't expect it to be taken? For some reason, the girl's kindness just made Ana feel worse. Part of her entire world view was that everyone was selfish at their core. That nobody was truly and actually good. This girl being so kind to some completely random person forced Ana to acknowledge the fact that this theory might not be the case, which meant that she was just abnormally selfish. The last thing she needed was to learn one more way she failed. Just one more way she had hurt everyone around her.

She arched an eyebrow slightly when the girl said not to leave. As if she would be frolicking the castle halls with her puffy eyes and dripping eye makeup. As the girl exited, she let out another sob. Her world just kept crumbling into smaller and smaller pieces. Every time she thought she had found something to hold on to, it was ripped away from her. Nothing she did seemed to matter. Why wasn't she good enough?

She wasn't a good enough daughter to please her parents. She wasn't good enough to save her mother. She wasn't a good enough friend to Eyre to support him when he needed her. She wasn't a good enough sister to Ivy to communicate with her about a discovery that was surely upending her entire life. She wasn't good enough to deal with this in a sane manner.

All she was capable of was hurting the people around her. On purpose or not, it seemed to be the only thing she could do consistently do successfully. That was never what she wanted. She wanted to be great. She wanted to do something with her life, build something lasting. Instead, all she did was tear things down.

Her tears had stopped as she stared ahead. All she wanted was for everything to go back to the way it should be. Where she was striving for perfection to please her parents, where her friends didn't hate her and she didn't hurt them, where she believed that she was better than everyone around her and had no reason to believe otherwise.

Her breathing slowed as she contemplated the shambles her life had become. It just wasn't fair.

After what seemed like a few seconds, the Hufflepuff reappeared. As much as Ana would have hated to admit it, the last thing she needed or wanted was to be alone. She accepted the tea and sugar before dumping both sugar packets into her cup. "Thank you," she said stiffly, her voice thick from crying. "I'd rather not talk about it." She didn't say anything in response to the other option, but offered a slight nod. It wasn't much encouragement, but if the Hufflepuff was particularly set on helping her, she might take it as a yes.

@Jess Malters

The other girl's smile made Ana once more aware of just how lonely she was. Pushing everyone away had seemed like the best way to protect herself, but she had vastly underestimated exactly how much she depended on the people that she cared about. She was an extrovert, but there was another layer. Her entire life before Hogwarts had consisted of her striving to live up to her parents' expectations. Sure, there would be the occasional snark or small rebellion, but for the most part, Ana's world began with, ended with, and orbited her parents' beliefs as if they were the sun. School had changed her, she liked to think for the better, but hadn't changed how she depended on others. While there were few people whose opinions actually meant anything to her, the ones that did possessed far more power over her than she was willing to admit.

At Jess's mention of her bracelet, Ana glanced at it. She'd nearly forgotten she was wearing it since it had seldom been off her wrist after Willow had given it to her. Absently tracing a finger over the woven accessory, she was reminded of a similar encounter only months before. While the scenery and company had changed, the reason for Ana's despair hadn't. Now that she thought about it, crying over her parents was probably the most consistent thing in her life. It was one of the only things that had ever made the Gryffindor weep, and certainly, the only one that had earned this many tears. What did that say about her? Was she really so weak that she wouldn't have figured out some solution to this issue or at least gotten used to it by now? She was able to in most other areas. Falling off her broom for instance. The first time she had fallen, really fallen, she had cried and declared she would never fly again. Now, she was able to shake off most falls and mount her broom again. Why was it so hard to do the same for her parents?

"Oh, it's something a friend gave me a while back," Ana said vaguely. She was someone who was fiercely loyal to those who had earned it, and her treatment of some of her friends was wearing her down. The girl almost burst into another round of sobs at Jess's request to hug her. Physical touch was most definitely Ana's love language, and she had been severely deprived of that growing up. Sniffling slightly, she wiped her nose. "I-yeah, that would be more than alright," she said, her voice hoarse and thick from crying.

@Jess Malters

The mention of friendship stung, a reminder of exactly what a terrible friend she had been to people who had done nothing but care about her. How had she managed to make such a mess of things? All she had been trying to do was protect the people she loved, but even in that, she had managed to hurt everyone she cared the most about. It seemed no matter how hard she tried, all she did was hurt people. She had hurt her parents with her own selfishness, which had gotten her disowned, her mother killed, and her father arrested.

Then, when she had tried to put her own wants and needs aside to protect her friends by distancing herself, she had wounded them. While she didn't relish the idea of telling anyone what had happened, she would have preferred it to the isolation she was now experiencing. People had been good friends to her when she didn't deserve it, and she had just pushed them away and lashed out until it stuck. The worst part was she had nobody to blame for any of it but herself. And blame herself she did. The commonality in all of her loved ones' hurt was her.

She was significantly hurting, and it seemed no matter what approach she tried, she was hurting the people around her. Her body heaved with a quiet sob as Jess wrapped her arms around Ana. It felt like ages since she had had any physical contact with anyone other than punching them, and for Ana, in particular, that was torture. She was the kind of person who lived for touch, whether it was a hug or holding someone's hand.

She hugged the younger girl back, utterly giving up on dignity and letting out another sob. She could just threaten the girl further if it seemed like she was going to spill anything Ana didn't want her to. "I doubt anyone actually wants to cry," Ana sniffled with a bitter laugh. It was more of a need, something that demanded to be felt and would build up and explode if it wasn't. Now that the tears had been let loose again, they didn't seem inclined to stop any time soon. Ana hated it. She hated crying in general and she hated why she was crying so much. She kept thinking that, at some point, she would run out of tears to cry. Not that she wouldn't still need to cry, but that she would be physically unable to produce a single tear. It hadn't happened yet.

As Jess's arms wrapped around Anastasia, she felt the other girl's body heave with another sob, and a lump rose up in her own throat. The older girl shouldn't be going through sorrow like this at her age, no matter what it was that was actually causing the sadness. It wasn't fair. Jess may not be able to help take the pain away forever, but she could at least try to alleviate it a bit now. As she felt Anastasia's body move again with the force of her words and dry laugh, she hugged herself closer to the girl and patter her back.

"Well," Jess said, her voice slow and thoughtful, almost as if she was coming up with the words as she was saying them. "I think that sometimes, people do want to cry, since it can feel like a release. Like, it can actually feel good- no, not good- I think that when you hold all your emotions bottled up inside, it can start to feel really overwhelming, like everything that you do is just spoiled because all you can think about is what you have welled up inside of you. So if you cry, then it can be a release, like what I said before. Like you're opening the floodgates, and you can finally let it all go." She paused for a moment, her eyes closed in memory as she tried to shape the words together. "And sometimes, you just can't cry, no matter how much you feel you might need to. So then, you do want to be able to just let it all out, to show that you do feel something, to... cry."

Her face a bit flushed now, her voice lowered back down to a soft murmur and she tightened her arms around Anastasia again. "But if those feelings don't apply to you, then you're right. I should have said 'need,' not 'want.' I'm sorry." She itched to ask the girl why she didn't want to cry- was she ashamed? If she was, then why? Who had told her that children couldn't cry sometimes? Did she think they were right? Why was she crying in front of Jess, and not one of her friends, who she actually knew and cared for? Why was she crying in the first place? Her mouth open, ready to ask, Jess firmly closed her lips and leaned her chin on Anastasia's shoulder instead. If the girl wanted to tell her any of that, she could, but she was going to have to do it for herself. Jess wasn't going to push her to say something she didn't want to say.

@Jess Malters

The Gryffindor had wanted a hug more than she was willing to admit. The feeling of not being so completely alone, of having someone there for her wasn't one she was familiar with, even prior to that summer. Her parents had never made her feel like that. Certainly, they would have helped her to cover up anything that might bring shame to the family, but behind closed doors, she was on her own. Pushing everyone away like she had had only made matters worse. She knew that she would hurt them with her changed behavior and her refusal to explain what was going on, so she had done her best to spare their feelings by cutting ties completely. There were numerous things that she hadn't considered - the first was that her being so terrible for no reason was anything but painless for her friends. The second was that it seemed to make everything she was dealing with exponentially worse. She had eliminated the possibility of friend jokes over breakfast or notes passed during lessons and it was as if her sorrow and pain were all there was.

What the younger girl was saying certainly had some merit to it, but Ana honestly wasn't processing most of it. "You're disturbingly wise for someone so short," Ana sniffled. While it wasn't obvious with both of them sprawled on the floor, Ana probably had close to a foot of height on the other girl. It occurred to her that could come off as rude, but seeing as the girl had opted to spend a significant portion of her afternoon fetching tea for and comforting some random stranger, Ana was hopeful the other girl wouldn't be terribly offended at it. "And I suppose want is as good a word as any."

"Nothing makes sense. Not anymore. I thought it did. I mean, it used to make sense, but it just doesn't," Ana said, as much to herself as to Jess. That was the core of everything. It wasn't just all the loss and isolation wearing on her, it was the way that it all happened with no rhyme or reason. Prior to that year, everything had clicked into place and made something resembling sense. Ana knew where she stood in the world and where she was going. All of that had disappeared that horrible July night she'd been disowned, and try as she might to find that self-assurance once more, she couldn't.

"I've been horribly rude,"Ana realized as her thoughts drifted lime falling snow. "I utterly neglected to ask for your name." She swallowed hard and the tears seemed to finally slow as she continued to hug the younger girl.

Though she heard Anastasia's sniffle as she spoke, Jess could tell that the other girl was easing into calm more than she had been before, and she was incredibly glad for it. The Hufflepuff was an avid believer in the power of words and the general talking over of problems, but even she could admit that this didn't always work.

Especially if Anastasia refused to really talk to Jess. Exchanging words about names and friendship bracelets was one thing, but the girl opening up about what had her sobbing on a bathroom floor, hidden away from all her friends and anyone else who might see, would be quite another entirely. The older girl was clearly avoiding her problems as it was, but if she so chose, then Jess, who could not claim to know her nearly enough to understand her motivations for doing so, was in no place to command her to do anything different.

As it was, all she could do was to try to carry out her promise to distract Anastasia. Though her thoughts on crying and the nature of need versus want were hardly small talk, they weren't exactly speaking to the root of the girl's sorrow, either, which meant that they technically qualified. Plus, Anastasia's slight could be considered a joke, Jess hoped, so maybe they had worked, at least in part.

"I'm the average height for my age, actually. It's not my fault if you're a head taller than normal human evolution dictates," she grinned, choosing to play into the tease before sobering up again. "And I'm not really 'wise' or anything. Just sharing my own thoughts and experiences. Everyone experiences everything differently, anyway, so there's no guarantee that what I said holds any truth for you or anyone else, I guess..."

There was a pause, one of many in this conversation of theirs, before Anastasia spoke again. Jess didn't mind the waiting, though. If she was being honest, the hug was rather as much for herself as it was for the older girl. And yes, a large part of that was that it helped to be able to physically comfort Anastasia instead of just spewing out words and hoping they had some effect, but it was about the Hufflepuff's own need for touch, too. She wasn't yet at that level with any of her new friends at Hogwarts where they hugged on the regular, and this lack of physical contact was weighing heavily on the young girl's heart. So, she may have hugged Anastasia for the other girl's benefit, but she was perfectly content, grateful, even, to just sit there in the embrace without either of them saying anything.

Anastasia's words, though, brought Jess back to who she was actually hugging and why. More than that, they signaled a shift for her, one that did not go unnoticed.

The older girl hadn't said anything about what concretely was causing her pain, far from it, but she was talking. It was a start. A start that prompted Jess to rethink her earlier resolve to let Anastasia go at her own pace, too.

There was a way, she supposed, for Anastasia to talk to her without really talking to her. Like what she had just said. Things didn't make sense anymore, but once had, which meant that something vital must have changed. A breakup was still definitely a possibility, but, despite never having been in a relationship herself and therefore technically in no position to have her own opinions on it, Jess highly doubted that getting broken up with would cast every other thing in Anastasia's life into doubt, too. The older girl seemed more the type to be the one to dump somebody rather than get dumped, anyway.

Either way, the point still stood. Anastasia had opened up, if only slightly, making herself just that much more vulnerable to Jess. And even if the other girl couldn't see it, the Hufflepuff believed that talking or at least self-reflection, which it seemed that Anastasia was trying desperately to avoid, would be the perfect way to make sense of things.

While Jess thought, quiet in her consideration, Anastasia continued speaking.

"Oh, I'm Jess. And don't worry about it," she smiled, "I don't really mind. It's a lot easier to talk to someone you don't really know and show yourself to them than to someone you're already friends with. This way, you don't have to worry about me changing an image I already have of you, I guess. And names might not seem like they matter, but learning mine makes me all that much more real and difficult to cry in front of."

As if on topic, Anastasia's tears seemed to be coming to an end, and Jess hesitated for a moment before speaking again, not wanting to turn this newfound comfort into renewed sorrow or annoyance at her own persistence. It was worth it to try, though, the Hufflepuff thought. "Look, I know you said you don't want to talk about it, but if everything really does seem to not make sense anymore, then I seriously think that it could help. And-" she quickly added, eager to lessen any possible negative effect of her words, "I'm not saying you need to talk to me, or to anyone at all, I guess. Writing it down should work just as well. Or just taking a few minutes to really think about what you're going through, to let yourself feel all that you're feeling and think about why you're feeling it, instead of just pushing through it or trying to treat it like it doesn't exist. I don't know what happened, but for me, at least, trying to think analytically about things can really help. If you can figure out what it is that's hurting you, you can figure out how to help it.

And obviously, if it's something out of your control that's the problem, then you can't really fix that. But you can still improve things for yourself. Like- you can think of when those feelings get bad, or when they get better. Cut out the former, do more of the latter. I don't know. It's worked for me, before, and it might work for you, too.

And again, I'm not saying that you have to physically talk about it to do that, but somebody else asking questions to help themselves understand might let you figure it out more, too. And, like I said before, it's a lot easier to do something like that with someone for who you don't have to maintain some sort of image or meet some kind of expectation, so - if you do decide to try to talk to someone about it, I'm here if you want to use me for that. So... yeah."