i can never leave the past behind
banner made by Lily McCoire
The Sorting Ceremony was over, and Evgenia was not entirely sure she hadn't hallucinated everything. Still, she sat stonelike in her seat as everyone seemed to stand and chatter and mill about like sheep. Her green eyes blinked up at the sky-mimicking ceiling. Interesting.
Hufflepuff. What an odd name. She forced herself to relax - sitting here stiff as a rod wouldn't do. "Posture, Evgenia! Back straight!" she could practically hear her coach yell. How had Mama explained her absence away to Aoife? Evgenia was miffed to admit to herself that she didn't actually know. And how would she keep her membership at the rink? Nonetheless, she was here. She might as well actually pay attention.
Evgenia finally allowed herself to properly look around at the magnificent hall, mostly ignoring the people around her. What . . . what even was this? Was it real? She adopted a mask of boredom for the eyes of anyone who might be looking at her, attempting to blend in with the crowds despite the fact that she stuck out like a sore thumb, dressed in black amidst a sea of yellow. She was a student here now - better act like it and act like she wanted to be here (even though she itched to be gliding onto the ice). None of the other Hufflepuffs seemed to pay attention to her. Nobody from any of the other so-called "houses", either. That was fine with Evgenia. But the question was, how long would it last?
mentions: @Lin Inkwarden
"Don't make a shadow of yourself, always shutting out the light." - Florence + the Machine, 'Third Eye'
Arcane power: 3 | Stamina: 8 | Evasion: 6 | Accuracy: 6 | Wisdom: 6 | Strength: 6
i can never leave the past behind
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Lin arrived at Hogwarts without many expectations, as per her mom suggestion, she said "Its better to go with an open mind" and Lin did. She was utterly amazed by everything and everyone, she had never seen so many people her age and so many things float everywhere!
"Gryffindor..." She muttered to herself while sitting in the red filled table after her sorting, looking everywhere almost with sparkles in her eyes, specially the beautiful enchanted ceiling. Her mom did mentioned she would likely end up in Gryffindor, but Lin didn't even know what that meant until now.
After the initial excitment wore off and people finished eating, some started getting up and walking around the hall and as expected, Lin curious as ever, stood up too and started walking around, first checking the wall and the huge pillars on the wall before doing a round between tables, smiling happily to anyone who saw her with her untie hair and amaze filled expression until she saw a very... Stiff looking girl. It would've been against her nature to walk pass her, so naturally she stopped by her side with the brighest smile.
"Hi! You have really pretty hair! Im Lin!" She blurted out of nowhere before extending her hand to the girl, always remembering her manners too late, one extends the hand and then introduce oneself, but... Same thing.
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date . [ September, 2026 ]
word count. [ 230 ]
tags . [ #meeting ]
with. @Evgenia Starkova
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i can never leave the past behind
banner made by Lily McCoire
As it turned out, Evgenia's period of going unnoticed wouldn't last long. "Hi! You have really pretty hair! I'm Lin!" came an excited voice. Evgenia turned to face this girl, a sudden smile curling her lips unbidden. "Oh - oh, hello." Her Russian-Scottish accent mix rolled out into open air. "Thank you. I'm Evgenia." She took Lin's hand tentatively, gripping it firmly like her father had taught her to. "Most people call me Zhenya." Sometimes her classmates at home had had a hard time pronouncing it, so she would occasionally end up as Genya or Eve since it wasn't uncommon for people to struggle to pronounce her full given name as well. "Are you new here, too?" She hadn't seen where Lin had come from. "It's my first year." Think, Zhenya. She expects you to make conversation, Mama would say. I want to go skate, Evgenia would probably say back (without any sass, as she knew never to sass her mother). And then Mama would just push her into the fray anyway. "I'm from Edinburgh. You?" Lin sounded more English. Evgenia wasn't a very good judge of accents, but she had met a few English people before in passing. The girl's smile was bright and fairly contagious, making Evgenia keep smiling back.
@Lin Inkwarden
"Don't make a shadow of yourself, always shutting out the light." - Florence + the Machine, 'Third Eye'
Arcane power: 3 | Stamina: 8 | Evasion: 6 | Accuracy: 6 | Wisdom: 6 | Strength: 6
i can never leave the past behind
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Lin smiled wider when the girl shook her hand, taking note of the firm grip before releasing her and sitting next to her when the opportunity came, resting her back against the table to be able to stand up if someone came telling her to move, she wasn't sure yet about how this houses stuff worked... She was allowed to talk to other houses, right?
"Thats a fun name! Evgenya... Am I saying it right?" She chuckled and tried to push her hair out of her face, grabbing it with her hands and moving it to the side while nodding. "Yes, I got sorted into Gryffindor just now, you are... Hufflepuff? Thats the name, right?"
Lin, talktive as always, wasn't the best at remembering stuff and with so much to memorize since her arrival, she barely had the mind to remember the name of the houses even, barely remembering her own.
"Oh! Where is that? You talk interesting, it sounds nice... Im from Colombia, really, but I grew up here, in a town called Ealing, its a bit... Far." She explained at best of her habilities, resting a an elbow in the table and her head over her hand, staring fascinated at the girl's eyes and finally focusing on one thing for now, after spending most of the day jumping from one thing to another, specially during the train and then the boat ride here, it wasn't her fault, with so many things to see.
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date . [ September, 2026]
word count. [ 244 ]
tags . [ #Meeting ]
with. @Evgenia Starkova
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i can never leave the past behind
banner by Lily McCoire
Evgenia nodded, not bothering to correct the finer points of Lin's pronuncation as it wasn't really a big deal. It could be difficult for people to really get a handle on, anyway. "It's Russian. I was born in Russia, but I've lived in Edinburgh for years." All her life, really. "Yes, I am in Hufflepuff." Gryffindor was the red one. Ravenclaw was blue - Evgenia knew that from meeting Lauren on the train - and Slytherin green. What was Gryffindor's mascot again? A dragon? Evgenia wasn't sure.
Lin explained where she was from and asked Evgenia where Edinburgh was, and Evgenia found herself explaining her own city. "It's in Scotland as well. And I probably talk interesting because me and my mama speak Russian at home, but I have to speak English everywhere else. It's hard to make my accent only Scottish. I've just given up on trying to control it." Evgenia wasn't even really sure why she sometimes tried so hard to keep her Russian accent away. She held Lin's eyes, relaxing more by the minute. "Were you born in Colombia, or in Ealing?" From the way Lin had said it, Evgenia guessed she had probably been born in Colombia.
@Lin Inkwarden
"Don't make a shadow of yourself, always shutting out the light." - Florence + the Machine, 'Third Eye'
Arcane power: 3 | Stamina: 8 | Evasion: 6 | Accuracy: 6 | Wisdom: 6 | Strength: 6
i can never leave the past behind
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"I think Hufflepuff's colours are really cute." Lin said with the most confident of smiles and only shut her mouth to pay attention to the girls explanation about her home and accent, it reminded Lin about her own and clearly, made her smile again before she laughed with joy.
"I have the same problem! My parents speak spanish at home aall the time and then my accent gets all weird, and then I start forgetting words, its a mess!" She said, sounding way too happy to be speaking about a so called problem, but it made her happy to know she wasn't the only one. "I like your accent anyway, it's really interesting." She said with a nod before a flutter of pride rushed through her eyes at the mention of her country.
"Well, I was born there but we moved when I was very little, like 3. I only speak spanish because around where I live there is a lot of kids from different countries, so we spoke spanish together growning up." Lin explained with big, almost dramatic gestures with her hands and clear excitment on her face, she could be quiet and you would be able to read her like an open book anyway. "I was meaning to ask you, why did you look so tense? Are you nervous? I am a little too."
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date . [ September, 2026 ]
word count. [ 230 ]
tags . [ #Meeting ]
with. @Evgenia Starkova
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i can never leave the past behind
banner by Lily McCoire
Evgenia nodded, adopting that confident image she had projected so well during her sorting. "Yes, I was born in Russia but my mama took me to America only two months later. She moved to Scotland with me after a year or so. I've only been back to Russia once." She could relate to what Lin had said, both about moving from her birth country very early in her life and about only having grown up speaking her birth country's tongue because of other speakers being nearby. "My mama and her sister spoke Russian to me in America, and Mama continued speaking Russian with me after moving to Scotland, but then she also had to teach me English. It helped that I went to a primary school where I was probably the only student in my class who spoke a different language, so everyone else was speaking English." Even though Mama had been the only other Russian speaker Evgenia had known in Scotland until she met her papa at seven years old for the first time since leaving Russia, her Russian accent and grasp of the language had stuck. Mama always called that a blessing. Even when Zhenya had used to get fairly annoyed at not sounding quite like her classmates, she insisted that it was an efficient and true reminder of where Zhenya had come from.
She paused at Lin's next question. "Well . . . I just don't quite believe all of this yet. And it certainly isn't where I am most comfortable. It's quite . . . chaotic." No lasting order, seemingly. Everyone was doing something wildly different. At the rink, people practiced spins and jumps or practiced footwork or just skated around if they were there for fun. Here, everyone seemed to be here for fun. Yes, it was a school - but it was quite a large, loud school.
@Lin Inkwarden
"Don't make a shadow of yourself, always shutting out the light." - Florence + the Machine, 'Third Eye'
Arcane power: 3 | Stamina: 8 | Evasion: 6 | Accuracy: 6 | Wisdom: 6 | Strength: 6
i can never leave the past behind
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Lin eyes sparkled as she grabbed a thick strand of her hair to softly play with it, twisting it and then trying to detangle it as she listened intensely to the girl. "Her story sounds so interesting..." She thought while giving her an entusiastic nod.
"I understand, I think I got lucky... Practicing spanish and english all the time, just my accent turned out funky but I think its okay." She said and she mean it, smiling softly as she flickered her hair back to go back to ignoring it, also paying attention to the perfect way the girls hair seemed to look under the artificial/magical light, Lin wasn't sure if the magical cealing counts as real or not.
She stopped just to give her space to answer and opened her mouth as a little O before she nods. "I get it, this place is huge..." Lin muttered while giving a quick look around, the Great Hall alone, making honor to its name, was huge and filled with so many people! Lin felt at home with the chaotic way everything went by but she knew it wasn't everyone's cup of tea.
"Are things in your house... Calmer? Do you have siblings? When did you discovered magic? I always knew it existed but I thought only my mom was magical, me doing this was a bit of a shock and since my house is soo noisy, its like being there." She said without any filter whatsoever, just after realizing she covered the poor girl in questions again, ups. "Mom says I speak a lot, Im sorry."
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date . [September, 2026 ]
word count. [ 266 ]
tags . [ #Meeting ]
with. @Evgenia Starkova
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i can never leave the past behind
banner by Lily McCoire
Evgenia observed Lin's glance around the majestic hall, mirroring her just briefly. This chatty girl who had so effectively engaged her in conversation was . . . interesting. Evgenia quite liked having such a casual interaction, after all. It helped ease some of her faint anxiety. "Yeah," she muttered in response to Lin. "I wasn't expecting it to be so big." Was it possibly a result of the "wizardry" Hogwarts claimed to nurture? It was an absolutely outlandish thought, but Evgenia had just been spoken to by a hat and witnessed countless other unexplainable things over the course of the following meal. She must be dreaming.
She snorted involuntarily at the other girl's next set of questions. "Ha! I'm an only child, though my papa just remarried last month. So, yes, my house is much calmer. It's just me and my mama. I'm hardly ever home, though." She paused briefly. "I, uh - I never actually knew about magic. My mama and I didn't believe the letter and thought it was an odd prank. Mama changed her mind after some weird people came to talk to her, though." Evgenia scrunched her nose up at the memory. "It is alright! I don't mind you talking a lot. I'm not always good at carrying a conversation."
@Lin Inkwarden
"Don't make a shadow of yourself, always shutting out the light." - Florence + the Machine, 'Third Eye'
Arcane power: 3 | Stamina: 8 | Evasion: 6 | Accuracy: 6 | Wisdom: 6 | Strength: 6
i can never leave the past behind
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She nodded softly in agreement, giving the room a last look around before going back to focusing on the girl, she seemed a bit out of place between the mess, specially when everyone was so energetic, probably from eating, but Lin knew she would fit in just fine. "It is very overwhelming... But Im sure we will be fine." She said with a chuckle before fixing her own robes and hair to give space for the girl to speak.
"Oh... I get it, I only have two sisters but my friends were at my house so much it was like being eight." She said trying to get a laugh out of her, visibly relief when she answered instead of telling her to shut up or worse, leave her alone.
"Why were you never home? Well, me too, but I was always outside in the forest or the creek or the garden or the park." She started listing places while making an exagerated gesture with her hands and a proud smile, after all being outdoors was her favorite thing to do, be it playing, exploring or simply hanging out and that clearly carried over to school. "Do you play any instrument? Or was it a sport?" Asked Lin trying to guess, she already met a boy who played some muggles instruments the muggle way, which for her was ghe normal one, made her wonder if sports were different too.
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date . [September, 2026]
word count. [ 230 ]
tags . [ #Meeting ]
with. @Evgenia Starkova
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