Of Exercise and Introductions... Again

Time had a weird way of progressing. Sure it was ‘relative’ but what did that even mean exactly? Well, Katrina had been finding out recently. Time being relative meant that sometimes a week felt like a week always has. Other times, a week felt like a year, each second stretching out and seeming to never end. And sometimes, a week just was gone. Just like that. One second, there was a week to a dueling match, then it felt like a blink and Katrina was stepping on the pedestal. But as Katrina looked back on the last year and was just so confused. How had she even gotten here? Where had the time gone? Was she even conscious the last 12 months? Did she just sleep for like 11 months and no one noticed? It felt like yesterday that she was being chased through the forest, seconds from death, but that was somehow more than a year ago. And that Potions test she had failed, that was months ago, wasn’t it? Nope, that was last week according to her schedule.

Was this some long-lasting prank? Was she just asleep? Did something happen to her, a spell or a potion or something? Anything to make this lapse of time make sense. But Katrina knew deep down it was nothing more than growing up. That odd warping of time had simply been some odd combination of trauma, sleep deprivation, being a teenager, and the monotony of day to day life recently.

Obviously, it was a good thing that life wasn’t so hectic anymore. It had been months since a kidnapping or a train wreck or a near death experience for Katrina or any of the people she talked to that she knew of. However, without the constant actual threat of danger and death, Katrina found herself both incredibly bored but also just constantly paranoid. A part of her was just constantly waiting for something horrible to happen again, she couldn’t help but constantly prepare for the worst, for someone she knew to disappear or get hurt.

Katrina shook herself from her own thoughts, recognizing her downward spiral of thoughts. She couldn’t do this today. It wasn’t the right time to dwell, she actually had something important to do today. At least now she could recognize when it got bad again, back herself up, shake herself back to reality. Katrina did this now, returning herself to reality, she rubbed the tips of her fingers against her thumb, this is real, this feeling is real, you aren’t there Kat, you’re here, just breathe. It was more of a habit at this point, but it was grounding and helped immensely.

Katrina pulled her jacket closer. Even despite her outfit that was relatively suited for the weather, she was still very cold. Katrina was attempting a slightly different style to her usual. Her base layer was a decently think black turtleneck that was cropped a few inches. She wore a pair of thermal leggings under slightly ripped jeans. Her shoes were brand new black boots. The jacket was duel layered, flannel and some thick brown fabric on the outside. The outfit relatively complimented her fiery red hair with it’s characteristic teal streak that was currently in it’s natural straight state, a bit frizzy due to the cold, but otherwise untouched.

Katrina stepped over a patch of condensed icy snow. It’d been a while since the snow last fell, leaving small bits scattered around the grounds of dirty icy clumps of snow. Probably where a snowman or a snow-fort once stood but was now beat into the cold earth. This was the dreadful weather Katrina hated the most. Bitterly cold and without snow, the birds and the small mammals that usually provided the comforting outside noise silenced. It felt unnatural. But Katrina still preferred the awful weather outside to the chaos of inside the castle.

As Katrina nearly slipped on a patch of the icy ground, she threw her arms out of her pockets prepared to brace herself. With the dramatic motion, a piece of folded paper flew out of her pocket. Katrina bit her lip and bent down, picking it up, squinting at the corner which was now damp from its adventure from her pocket to the ground. Katrina unfolded it, sighing and reading again the letter she had received earlier this week. A request to meet someone between 1 and 3 on Saturday and Sunday.

It was now roughly 1:30 in the afternoon on Saturday. Katrina didn’t necessarily want to seem overly excited to meet someone that she had hardly talked to prior. She liked to at least have the appearance of someone with a roughly busy social schedule even though she hardly ever talked to anyone but herself these days. Well, that wasn’t exactly true, there were friends between classes, and the Common Room chaos almost every night, and had her dueling team, and the people that she worked with on group projects for school projects. There was definitely a part of Katrina that was happy to be alone so much, it was refreshing, but the loneliness had started to creep in recently and she was ready to do something new, meet people again. More than anything, just do something different.

The person Katrina was going to meet now was none other than Jess Malters. Jess was a girl Katrina had met a few summers back. They had a rather memorable conversation then, and Katrina had taken some affection to the younger girl. They had seen one another off and on in the halls or at sociable events for while. Upon receiving the letter, Katrina thought back and realized it had been a fair bit since they had talked, or even since Katrina had seen her. It wasn’t uncommon for people to move in and out of one’s life, it seemed to happen more and more recently, but Katrina tended to still see the people in the halls even if they didn’t have a conversation, perhaps a wave or a nod of a head would be expected. But she hadn’t seen the younger girl in a while, in fact, Katrina couldn’t remember the last time she saw her at all.

Katrina slipped her wand out of the holster she’d made and sewn into the hem of her jacket, spinning it in her hand. There was of course the part of Katrina that was nagging that this could be a set-up. There could be some mysterious masked person that was waiting to steal Katrina again, ruin her life. But no, it sounded like Jess enough, and the handwriting seemed like it would make sense. She was still prepared anyway.

What did Katrina think of Jess anyway? She seemed like what adults would refer to as an ‘old soul’ one of those surprisingly mature teens that seemed to be one step ahead of their peers. Katrina supposed Jess reminded herself of herself a few years ago. Although Jess seemed to be far more articulate than Katrina had been when it came to words. She was easy to talk to, almost too easy, Katrina had found herself several times saying more than she meant to. Katrina had sort of spilled a lot in their first meeting, somehow taking it upon herself to prepare Jess for the inevitable dangers of the school, perhaps it had been premature or unnecessary but there was no taking it back. Jess had taken it well, at least that Katrina knew of, and she had already prepped herself for this meeting to not do the same.

She didn’t exactly know what to expect from Jess, it was one of the reasons Katrina felt so apprehensive about this meeting. Katrina channeled her anxious energy into spinning the wand in her hand, a wayward glance to her side proving that her wand-spinning skills had improved. It was but an absent-minded habit, but it looked cool, especially when dueling, so Katrina kept the skill in well practice.

At last Katrina spotted what she figured was Jess. Her hair was longer and she looked a bit older, at least from behind. Katrina swung wide with her approach so she entered from the side, not meaning to startle the younger student by bursting in from behind. Now that she knew she wasn’t in immediate danger from the meeting, the letter from Jess had indeed been a letter from Jess, Katrina slipped the wand away, offering a small wave and a smile.

Katrina walked up, hiding her apprehension of the meeting behind a smile and a relaxed demeanor, she braced against the cold air as she let her tight hold of her jacket around herself go. Thinking back to their first meeting, Katrina was happy to note that her uncomfortableness with social situations had lessened and she knew better this time. Braving a more casual greeting, Katrina sent a, “How’s it going?” Jess’ way and hoped for the best.

Her boots had taken most of the damage from the puddle from earlier, thankfully. Sitting now, under the leafless, reaching branches of the big tree she had promised Katrina she'd wait for her by, Jess was perhaps irrationally glad for it. Wet boots had their downsides, sure, but at least they meant that her socks and, most importantly, her feet were spared from the cold of melted-snow puddle water. More than that, it gave Jess an excuse - the cold wasn't too bad. Her feet weren't too uncomfortable. She didn't have to attempt to cast Incendio.

Try as she might, Jess couldn't move past that point. Small and immaterial though it was, the Hufflepuff just kept thinking about that moment, imagining her hand as it moved toward her wand and then, hesitating, returned to her pocket. She hadn't even seen her hand, in reality, but she'd watched it play out in front of her eyes, taking her attention away from whatever was actually in front of her, so many times now that it felt as though she had.

It felt representative of all her failures as a witch, that hand. She'd get determined, start going for something - then she'd get scared and stop. She'd justify it to herself, or attempt to, but the result was always the same. Her boots wouldn't be warmed. The fire at the Costume Party wouldn't be put out. She wouldn't be able to help. No - she would choose not to, too scared of the possibility of her own failure to even try.

But Kat could help fix this. Katrina could teach her how to defend herself; give Jess a personality to latch onto and borrow for her own character in an attempt to put on a facade of bravery until the real thing set in. Katrina could make it all better.

But Katrina wasn't coming.

It'd been almost a half hour now, according to the small watch Jess kept in her pocket and was periodically taking out now to look at and orient herself with. She'd have preferred to just use her phone as a quick reference, but, knowing that it wouldn't work at Hogwarts anyways, she'd left it at home. That had been one - and one of the only - good things about being back in the Muggle world, she supposed. Technology. Maybe it was for the best that wizards couldn't really use the Internet, though; social media addictions were no rare occurrence among Muggles, and not having phones available at all times really did let kids get so much more done.

Either way, phone to show it or no, half an hour had passed since the time when Jess had agreed to meet Kat. She'd tried reading, but it was only so long until some printed word like "fire" or "guilt" sent her spiraling back to imagined images of her hand inching closer and closer to her pocket before falling away. The repeated attempts and failures to lose herself in a different world were growing tiresome, but Jess supposed she really couldn't complain. It had been her own decision to specifically instruct Kat not to let her know beforehand whether she'd be coming or not, after all; she shouldn't be surprised that she was left alone, now.

Wait - was that the sound of a footfall?

Looking to her side, Jess spotted Katrina stepping closer and felt an immediate rush of relief. The older girl was here. Jess wouldn't be left sitting here alone for another two hours, trapped with nothing but her never-ending thoughts about her own failures keeping her company. It'd be okay.

Her initial reaction of salvation fading, Jess was left free to observe the girl she hadn't seen in nearly a year. She had two immediate thoughts: 1) Wasn't Katrina cold? Her outfit was cool, but it left her open to all the elements of the frigid air, and just looking at the girl sent a shiver down Jess's own spine. 2) The girl looked exactly the same as when Jess had last seen her, as she had when they had first talked at summer camp. Maybe it was the fact that Jess had pictured this conversation and how Katrina would look hearing the Hufflepuff's request during it so often, or that that day in summer camp was so engrained in the girl's mind, but the older student's image was a steady constant in her eyes. This was the Katrina that she had come to admire; this was the Katrina that she knew.

As she approached, Kat put her wand, which she had been carrying, back into her pocket. Jess didn't think too much of it, but considering that the Gryffindor probably wasn't the type to toy with her wand whenever bored, duellist as she was, the second year made a mental note to look out for it later, lest it be something more than she had originally pegged it as. The older girl waved and, grateful for her apparent friendliness, Jess returned the action.

"Hey," Jess said in response to Katrina's greeting, not sure she was quite ready to spill all that had happened just yet. "It's... going. I like your jacket." Despite her deflection of Katrina's question - for the moment, at least - Jess did actually want to know how the other girl was doing, especially since the last time they'd really talked one-on-one had revolved quite a lot around Kat's mental state. "What about you? How have you been?"

As Katrina approached from a bit back she saw Jess reach into a pocket and glance at what Katrina assumed at such a distance was a watch. Perhaps the half an hour wait before arriving was a bit unnecessary, there really wasn’t a need to make the younger girl wait out in the cold as Katrina attempted to make herself seem busy. Nonetheless, there was nothing she could do about it now, she’d made up her mind and was here now. Hopefully Jess wasn’t too upset about it, after all she had left such a wide opening in the time frame she would be available to meet, it was expected Katrina may not be there right on time.

Jess looked up as Katrina neared from her side and Katrina got a glimpse of relief on her face. Relief that Katrina had actually shown up most likely. A small twinge of guilt worked it’s way into Katrina and she had to remind herself that she wasn’t entirely responsible for Jess setting such a flexible meeting time.

In the moment between Jess acknowledging Katrina’s approach and her small greeting, Katrina took the time to look Jess over more than just from behind. She looked older now, a bit taller too. Jess’ outward changes weren’t so much that Katrina couldn’t recognize her but enough that suited her well. There did seem something off about her though, not her outward appearance but something more. Katrina recognized the emotion, hesitancy, but maybe more than just their interaction. Something more was troubling her. That honestly wasn’t unusual for students of this school in particular but it still was a bit sad to see anyone be troubled. Katrina tucked away the note for later and decided not to bring it up for now.

In response to Katrina’s greeting, Jess responded with the common ‘it’s going’ to which Katrina nearly laughed as it very well encapsulated the feeling Katrina was experiencing as she had made her way to this meeting to begin with.

Jess quickly moved on and complimented Katrina’s jacket. A grin made its way onto Katrina’s face and she looked down at it sticking her hands into her pockets and holding one side a bit open to show the inner layer better. Katrina was quite fond of the new jacket and was pleased despite herself that Jess liked it. “Thanks! It’s new” Katrina said with a smile. Her fashion wasn’t necessarily something she prized as much as others but it was always a nice surprise when people commented on it.

Jess inquired on how Katrina was doing and she took a breath of the chilly air as she contemplate what and how much to say. After all, Katrina was pretty certain there was more to this meeting than a quick catch up and she wasn’t planning to have another interaction where Katrina just lamented her troubles to the first person who asked. “I’m doing alright. Just a bit off I suppose. You know the whole ‘time is relative’ thing. I’ve been sort of discovering how true that is recently,” After saying it, Katrina hesitated, hopefully she hadn’t just lost Jess entirely quoting a really old muggle philosopher/inventor guy. “But surprisingly uneventful overall I suppose,”

Katrina returned the conversation to Jess, “What about you? What have you been up to?” Katrina again thought about not seeing Jess, what had she been up to? This is the point Katrina may have inquired about Quidditch or Dueling as so many students were invested in some sport or extracurricular but she couldn’t recall if Jess was a part of anything in common with Katrina or even anything Katrina knew much about.

Katrina also figured this would probably be an easier way to find out what it was that Jess had asked her here for rather than coming out and just asking.