Meeting More Like Me Finished

"I'm Leaving this is annoying and we're here, Mud-Bloods."

Hydro would leave the compartment with all of his things. How terribly sad, he would not longer get to be ignored by the pretentious youth. It was apparent that his time, efforts and breath were being wasted on Hydro Maniac. What a shame, there was this fleeting delusion of potential in the young man who seemed more interested in interfacing with himself and finding strangers that were being made up on the spot found to interface with instead. There should be a bit of relief, a weight of sorts taken off the teen's shoulders. The new guy was no longer his burden, no longer his problem. That's to say he honestly cared about the boy, which he did not, it was merely his good deed of the day and it was a failure.

He would take hold of his suitcase, that oversized behemoth on wheels and find another compartment to rest in for the duration of the train ride back to Hogwarts. On his way out he would see a girl that he did not know. A Hufflepuff, how ironic, not that he knew as she opened the door to find herself eye level with his chest. Hydro must not have seen her standing there, blocking the door. Perhaps the youth was made of vapor and passed right through the girl. He would freeze for a moment. He did not even hear her knock and despite his appearance which seemed calm and cool, his nerves were raw and on edge.

"Sorry if I'm interrupting anything."

"No, you really were not," he announced. Something she would quickly come to understand herself if she chose to stay. She was blocking the door, the path by which he needed to take unless he wanted to jump out a window to leave this compartment. He was unwilling to do the later.

"But have any of you seen Alexa Mackenzie? Um, she's Hufflepuff... second - wait, no, third - year... probably not wearing her robes though... red hair, green eyes, maybe a little taller than me?"

She was looking for a friend. A friend that Victor did not know. She had just described about an eighth of the school - gingers were freakishly common amongst purebloods it would seem.

"Possibly wearing a bracelet that looks like this one?"

He would look at the bracelet she held up, rose gold and with a word he did not know-- "Amiga." Well, whatever an Amiga was, there were three of them. "No, I have not seen Alexa Mackenzie," the name the girl had provided that he briefly committed to at least his short-term memory. "I don't pay much attention to ladies' jewelry either," he gave her a half-smile as well as a polite apology "--sorry."

He was not a fan of the idea of pushing out of the compartment he was sharing with Ari and formerly Hydro Maniac; Victor would gesture with the back of his hand that he was intending to exit the compartment he was in, the wheeler-bag at his heels. "I am just on my way out I am afraid, but if I find her I will say that you--" he left the girl a space to provide her name if she so chose "--are looking for her." He offered with the basic civility a human would give another. "We just had some tool leave" presumably as he found a fresh NPC to ignore them with "not sure if he is coming back. He took his stuff so there is hope at least that he will stay gone. He has an issue with Hufflepuffs and muggle-borns and lacks the manners even a barn animal might have so expect a mixture of being insulted by proxy as he ignores you and insults you to someone else if he comes back," he warned.

"Have a decent remainder of your trip," he addressed Ari, Lucia and the 'Hufflepuff' NPC.

@Hydro Maniac, @Lucia Fox, @Ari Gwild

Standing on platform 9 3/4, Alexa looked up at her father who stared vacantly around himself. She tried to sound chipper. "Okay dad," she said quickly. "Looks like I'm off. You sure you're going to be okay?" She tried to hide how worried she sounded leaving her father alone now that her mother was gone.

Gone. Dead. The word left a hollow in her chest where it felt like her heart should've been. For a moment she gasped for breath before she gathered herself again. Her mom had passed less than a month before, leaving Alexa feeling lost and confused very often. But no one was more lost than her father.

He stood there beside her, his clothes dirty, his eyes vacant, jobless, hopeless, empty. He had been that way since she had died. Alexa honestly didn't know how he would manage without her… But she couldn't not go to school. What was she supposed to do?

The train whistle sounded, so she quickly hugged her father who hugged her back vaguely, staring away above her head. "Love you dad," she murmured into his shirt. "Love you," he muttered quietly above her. Hiding her tears, she quickly turned away and pulled her trunk onto the train with the rest of the students.

Dashing the betraying wetness from her eyes, she looked around for someone she knew, anyone, and caught sight of a young man bursting from a compartment, seemingly angry. He met up with another young student and they strutted down the corridor proudly. She shook her head. People were so full of themselves. Curiously, she peeked into the compartment. There were four people there, and the oldest one was getting up to leave. He stood at the doorway, speaking to those inside the compartment. As they turned to face him, Alexa caught sight of her best friend Lucia. Squeaking with surprise, she waited for the older student to move out of the doorway, and as he walked away she slipped inside.

"Lucia!" She cried from the doorway, her trunk still halfway in the hall. She barely noticed the two other students in the compartment as she practically threw herself at her friend. It was so wonderful to see her again, finally, after a hard summer.

[ @Ari Gwild • @Victor Moore • @Alexa Mackenzie]

"Oh." Lucia slumped a little, trying not to be dejected. She'd thought it was unlikely that the boys would have seen Alexa, but still... she'd let herself hope. "Oh, okay. I'll find her. Somewhere."

Then the boy who had come to talk to her made a waving sort of motion with her hand and Lucia suddenly realised that he hasn't gotten up to talk to her; he'd gotten up to leave. "Oh! Lucia. Fox. Lucia Fox." She was babbling, wasn't she? She should stop babbling. Lucia clamped her mouth shut and moved to the side a little to leave room for the boy to exit. "Thank you. Thanks." Merlin's beard, she sounded a mess. I look a mess as well, Lucia thought to herself, catching her reflection's eyes in the window. She didn't, of course - it would be quite a feat for a part-Veela to look a mess - but her hair was coming out a little and her shirt was untucked, and Lucia Fox had rather high standards for herself. Lucia suddenly realised that the boy was still talking and turned back to him. He was warning her about... another boy? Oh, maybe that was the one who'd rushed past Lucia earlier as she knocked on the compartment door. "Um, okay. Thanks. You too, I guess. Um." Luckily for just about everyone, the boy left before Lucia could pray to Merlin to let the ground swallow her up. She wasn't usually this bad at meeting people! But now she was under pressure from Ebony not to act awkward and uncertain, Lucia suddenly found herself doing exactly that.

And then she was saved.

Alexa Mackenzie flung herself in Lucia's direction, crying her name, and nearly knocking her over. "Alexa!" Lucia grinned at her, suddenly forgetting about her flyway hair and her untucked shirt and the other people in the compartment. Alexa had that kind of effect on her. "I've been looking for you! Do you have a compartment, or should we stay here? Or we could find an empty one?" she babbled, flushing when she realised that that was what she was doing. "Ah, sorry," she sighed, tucking a wisp of flyaway hair behind her ear. "Merlin knows this is the first time I've talked to a friend in person since the Beckett summer ball."

Finally, Someone I Know!

Alexa squeezed Lucia tightly for a moment, as though afraid her best friend was going to escape. Tears stung her eyes before she could stop them, and she pulled away quickly, her trunk still in one hand and half inside the compartment. With her free hand, she quickly dashed away the tears, ducking her head to hide behind her long, wavy red hair as she did so. Then she looked up at Lucia, her green eyes shining perhaps a little too brightly, but shining with happiness for the first time in a while, nonetheless.

"It's so good to see you! I don't have a compartment. I was just walking through when I saw you in here. Have you seen Henry?" Alexa was also babbling, not at all noticing that her friend was as well. But then Alexa's face darkened slightly. "Maybe we should find our own compartment," she muttered, thinking of what she had to tell Lucia and dreading it. How would her friend react? Alexa didn't want anyone's pity. She didn't think she could take it, honestly. It would just probably make her cry, or at this point, be angry. She felt more and more angry than she did like crying these days.

Alexa glanced nervously at the other two boys in the compartment, and shifted her weight from foot to foot. It reminded her of her new trainers, and she glanced down at the royal blue shoes, Chuck's, ones that she had gotten from her parents for her birthday. Part of her wished she had other trainers to wear, so as to not have this constant reminder that shot pain to her heart every time she saw them. At the same time, she wanted to take them off and hug them to her chest. The shoes spoke of her mother and her father in the last days before things had all gone to hell.

She looked back up at her best friend, realizing that she had completely spaced out for a moment. Blushing with embarrassment (how unusual – not!), Alexa smiled weakly at her best friend. "Yeah, let's definitely find a different compartment. One for just us, if we can. I have something I need to tell you."

Before Lucia could respond, Alexa quickly whirled around and caught up her trunk by one end in both hands, feeling Rascal stir in her T-shirt pocket under her sweater from his nap as she did so. She vaguely remembered Lucia saying something about herself and rats, but couldn't recall what it was. She hoped it wasn't important.

Dragging her trunk out into the hallway of the Express, she turned to see if her friend was following as she looked for a new compartment.

[ @Ari Gwild • @Alexa Mackenzie]

Alexa was also talking quickly, as though words were just falling out of her mouth without her having ime to properly think about them. Maybe that's why she and Lucia got along so well? They were both awkward. "No," she said, and then nodded at Alexa's suggestion that they get a new compartment. "Sure, okay." She turned and gave the remaining occupants of the compartment behind her a small smile. "Um, sorry for disturbing you. Uh. Bye."

An awkward wave, and then Lucia took ahold of the handle of her trunk, turning to follow Alexa back into the corridor, which was now blissfully calm - or, at least, calm compared to the rushed mess that it had been when Lucia had gotten onto the Hogwarts Express. Through the windows, she could see the countryside flying past them, and for a moment felt an undisputable flood of joy. Lucia was going back to Hogwarts, and her sister was somewhere down the corridor, and she had her best friend beside her. But then a dam was errected when she remembered what Ebony had told her just before they left home. We're gossip again, now. I don't suppose you remember how it was the first time. But you're going to have to remember everything I've taught you.
But what if I can't? Lucia had murmured. What if I'm not perfect, and elegant, and-
Ebony had tilted her head upwards, forced her to look into her eyes. Then you're just going to have to pretend.

Lucia turned and hurried after Alexa, wishing she could just leave everything behind her as swiftly as the Hogwarts Express was leaving London.

thread left, to be continued in another thread with alexa