Broken Pieces PV Jess Malters Closed

Jess shivered, clutching the bottom of her hood closer to her neck to cover her skin better. Her coat was warm and heavy with its extra padding and fur along the hood, but, somehow, the girl was still absolutely freezing. Maybe she shouldn't have worn jeans under the coat. Woops. Anyways, at least she looked good under all the cold and shivering.

Maybe it was because of this strange, hand-clutching-hood position, or maybe it was due to her mind being long gone in her own fantasy world, thinking about a story she had read the day before, but Jess wasn't watching where she was going. Before she knew what had (literally) hit her, there was a sudden strong, sharp pressure under her chin, and she stumbled back more in surprise than actual pain.

It had hurt, though, and Jess stood massaging her chin where her lower jaw had crashed into her top one, sending a shock wave of pressure throughout all her teeth. Still a bit too absorbed in her own troubles to notice what had actually caused the shock, Jess ran her tongue gingerly over each tooth, making sure none of them were shaking or knocked loose. Thankfully, everything seemed to be in place and steady. Good thing her teeth had grown strong from wearing braces before, Jess figured. Having found that her mouth was, in fact, going to be alright, the Hufflepuff finally directed her attention to whatever it was that had bumped into her chin.

Standing in front of her was another girl, frantically apologizing for bumping into her and asking if anything was broken. Jess shook her head in response, then let out a little chuckle. Whoever this girl was, she was honestly way too concerned, though Jess didn't view that as a necessarily bad thing. It just showed that the girl cared a lot, which was good. "Yeah, I'm okay," she said, trying to smile at the girl reassuringly. I'm fine, she wanted to say, you don't need to worry about or feel bad around me..

The girl seemed to relax without Jess's unspoken words, though, but her name brought Jess looking rather sharply at her. Rhea Miller. Where had she heard that name before? Or, had she read it? Yes! She could remember looking at the letters spelling out the name on a page, but where could that possibly have been from? With a slight widening of her eyes, Jess suddenly remembered where she knew the girl from. Now, to ask her about it or not to... well, if Jess remembered correctly, the girl had written that she wanted to meet Jess, so she supposed she might as well approach her now about it.

"It's really okay, and I'm Jess Malters. Um, this might be a bit blunt, but are you the one who left a note in the abandoned bathrooms along with the piece of paper that was there before?" She asked, trying to make herself look as welcoming as possible.

At the girl Jess's statement, Rhea frowned. The note in the abandoned bathrooms? That was back in October, she hadn't even thought about it for ages. How did Jess know about it? Had she come along afterword and read it?

Rhea felt a prick of embarrassment. Once she had left that note in the toilets, she had known that it was out of her hands, but it was still odd to imagine someone scanning her handiwork. They had probably made assumptions about her character and who she was as a person based on that one foolish piece of parchment, one with ink smears and misspellings everywhere. She would have surmised that whoever wrote it was not the cleverest.

Jess was still clearly in pain, but seemed to be trying to look like she was overly happy. She was probably doing that for Rhea's benefit, to make the Gryffindor feel better. Jess did seem genuinely excited to recognize the young girl.

"Yes," Rhea said finally. "I was among those who did that."

She began to walk backwards a bit, and stumbled as she began to descend downhill. An involuntary gasp escaped her, accompanied by a microexpression of terror, before her features returned to their typical glare. She hoped Jess hadn't noticed.

Rhea became aware that she was approaching the surface of the lake. It was frozen, so falling in shouldn't prove to be an issue, but nonetheless her stomach momentarily seized with fright. Or maybe with cold. Did stomachs do that? She knew that shivers made you tense, and so did fear, so yes, it could have been either. Oh, and shivering was even caused by both of those feelings! Were fear and cold linked? Although, fright had never made Rhea shiver. Perhaps that phenomenon only occurred in movies.

Her heel touched ice, snapping her out of her reverie. She didn't realize that she had continued walking.

"Oh, er.." Rhea said, hastily trying to come up with something to say. What had they been talking about? Oh, yes, the note. She had been wondering how Jess knew about it. That was a good place to pick up.

"Erm, why do you ask? Did you come along after and read it?" she questioned.

@Jess Malters

With a sinking feeling, Jess realized that her question may have gone too far. Knowing what she knew, her inquiry had originally seemed perfectly justified, as Rhea had written that she wanted to meet Jess, and this was the young Hufflepuff's way of letting her know that her wish was being granted. As she saw Rhea's face form into a frown, however, and sensed the other girl's hesitation, Jess realized that what she had asked had only served to put Rhea in an extremely uncomfortable situation. What she ought to have considered, Jess mentally chided herself, was that while she knew exactly what the meeting between the two of them was shaping up to be, Rhea had no way of knowing this.

In fact, the question was probably unwelcome, seeing as it was jarringly sudden and without warning. Really, Jess had just revealed to Rhea that she had read the other girl's thoughts from what had likely been an extremely vulnerable moment, while, as a stranger to Rhea herself, nothing about her own character was known to the other girl. Realizing just how inopportune her question had been, Jess wrung her hands, trying desperately to think of something to say that would ease the tension in the air.

Before she could, though, she saw Rhea begin to walk away, trip, and let out a slight gasp. "Are you okay?" Jess quickly called, her worry swept for a moment out of her mind by more immediate matters. She watched the other girl continue walking, uncertain whether or not she should follow. On one hand, she was eager to make up for her earlier directness, but on the other, it might be best to leave Rhea alone for now. Apparently, though, the other girl still had at least some desire to continue talking to the young Hufflepuff, as Jess soon heard her ask a question.

"Well, I guess you could kind of say that..." she said hesitantly. She had been yearning all this time to explain to Rhea why she had asked what she had, but now that the time had actually come, she felt strangely exposed revealing that she had been the anonymous writer of the letter in the abandoned bathrooms. Her feeling of unease only brought with it the reminder of how much more laid bare Rhea must feel in this moment, though, and she resolved to get the words out. "I actually wrote the note. The original one, I mean, that you added onto later."

There. The statement was made. Jess watched Rhea carefully, her cheeks now a bit flushed as she waited for the unavoidable judgement of the other girl, whether it be good or bad.

Jess was blushing a bit, her vague statement having apparently embarrassed her. Rhea tilted her head. There was clearly something going on here that the young Gryffindor was unaware of. I guess you could kind of say that? What an odd thing to express. Rhea's inquiry had been entirely straightforward, a yes or no question, certainly.

Jess's next statement cleared up all of Rhea's confusion.

A cacophony of thoughts all simultaneously sparked into existence in Rhea's head, and it took her a good minute to sort them out. She sat down again, this time completely on the ice.

Firstly, there was Jess, who was watching Rhea carefully and cautiously, as if Rhea was a bomb about to go off. Perhaps the Hufflepuff believed she had caused the Gryffindor umbrage. If so, Rhea thought, that would be incorrect; she was not offended, just surprised. After all, Rhea had written that she wanted to meet the anonymous writer in her note. Her wish was coming true now. The situation was not ideal, but still.

Secondly, Rhea had realized that Jess had not joined her by the frozen lake. She still stood at the top of the slight descent (alliteration), apparently waiting for something. Rhea may have been reading that wrong, actually. Perhaps she had wanted to give Rhea space, for some reason? Did she hate her already? That made Rhea a bit sad, honestly. Jess seemed very nice.

Thirdly, Rhea's embarrassment at Jess having read the note had worsened significantly. Jess had written a heartfelt, long, neat letter for the benefit of anyone that came across it. Rhea had scrawled a messy charcoal message on a scrap of parchment and promptly forgotten about it. What kind of person did that? A fool, perhaps, of a sociopath.

Rhea had never before cared if she behaved like what someone might call a sociopath (i.e. emotionless, calculating, ect.) What an unusual feeling. Being at this school truly had changed her, then.

The fourth was the knowledge of what an incredibly tense situation they were both in at that moment. They stood rather far apart, studying each other, both very deep in their own thoughts. It was like they were two different species in a zoo. Staring at each other from opposite sides of paned glass, observing and calculating, like in those internet videos. They must have appeared so foolish-looking to any random passersby. (Or was it passer-bys? Passerbys? Passerbyes? What an odd two words to smash together.)

It occurred to Rhea then that Jess was still awaiting her verdict. With a deep breath, she finally spoke.

"That was extraordinarily kind of you. I knew it was a Hufflepuff." Rhea pause, waiting for a reaction. Then she lifted her gloved hand and beckoned. "Come over here, I can hardly hear you."

@Jess Malters

Thankfully, Rhea didn't appear to be fuming at Jess's statement, though she did remain silent for some time. The Hufflepuff watched the other girl as she sat down onto the ice, fiddling with her fingers nervously as she awaited her response. Finally, Rhea spoke.

Scarlet spread across Jess's cheeks as the other girl called her kind, and her next statement made the girl let out a rather abrupt, relieved sigh. Rhea wasn't mad at her, then, or upset with her for knowing who the other girl was yet not saying anything. "Yeah, I guess I'm kind of a typical Hufflepuff..." she said, still smiling from her earlier laughter. "I think getting sorted into the house actually made me more of one, if that makes any sense."

At Rhea's next request, Jess hurriedly started down the hill. She had thought before that the other girl might want some space, but now that she had been called over, she was eager to make up for her earlier lack of proper communications with her. "Listen," she started, looking intently at Rhea. Apparently, though, her gaze may have been better off had it been looking down at the ground instead, as her words cut off abruptly as she felt her foot wrap around some sort of rock or twig hidden underneath the layer of snow covering the ground, and she felt herself falling. She tried to twist around, desperately, as the ground came closer and closer to her body, but her jacket, heavy in the warmth it provided, slowed her down.

She still managed to land on her side, though, rather than her face, which she considered a win. The victory was remarkably short lived, however, as the small heap of snow marking the transition from flat ground to the gradual decline leading to the lake gave way under Jess's weight, and, with a slight widening of her eyes as she realized what was happening, the force of her fall brought her tumbling down the hill. Slipping and sliding as her hands fought to find something to ground her among the snow, Jess's hands simply slipped through the powdery surface and, unable to stop herself, she tumbled directly onto the ice of the lake. Momentum still not gone, the girl skidded along the ice until, finally, she slowed to a stop a couple of feet from the shore.

Rubbing the arm she had initially fallen on, Jess carefully turned around and, gingerly, scared to break through the lake's surface, lifted herself onto her knees. The ice felt solid as she pressed her fingers onto it, slightly, at first, then with more pressure, but she still found herself hesitant to trust the frozen area. "Wait," she called out to Rhea, raising an arm out at her to ward the other girl off. "Don't come any closer." The ice seemed able to support her weight for now, but there was no telling how that might change if another weight was added onto the already heavy burden the lake's surface was holding up.

Rhea watched in horror as Jess slipped down the slope of the hill, reflexively making a move to grab hold of her - her arm, her shoulder, her coat, anything - an even had an opportunity to do so; as she stumbled closer, the Hufflepuff reached out an arm to wave her off. It took a moment for Rhea to get the message.

Rhea stood on the ice, balanced rather precariously on the slippery sheet, boots previously planted firmly beneath her, now frozen in a ridiculous running stance as she considered her next move. Jess's strong impact on the surface could've affected its strength to hold up; there might've been a crack underneath the ice that would give out at the slightest movement from Jess.

"Stay there!" Rhea called unnecessarily.

How were you supposed to get across thin ice? She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on her thoughts and block out all the noise. Lay horizontally on your stomach, right? No crawling, just rolling. Arms stretched over your head.

"Lay flat!" Rhea advised. "Stick your arms out!" She couldn't be sure that Jess heard her, but at that moment it wasn't her primary concern, though it probably should've been.

It was a fact that, despite her logical nature, Rhea could be horribly reckless. This was one of those occasions. She was unable to direct her mind anywhere other than the problem at hand; that "other than" included a calculated, well-thought-out solution. Naturally, she needed to play the hero and prove her daring to... well, no one, except herself.

The Gryffindor got gingerly down on her hands and knees and began to crawl towards Jess across the ice. It was a stupid decision, an avoidable mistake- yet she stifled the voice in the back of her head that warned her, and made her way towards Jess.

This is me proving my bravery, she thought. This is the reason I was sorted into Gryffindor.

Blinded by bravado, self-satisfaction, and confidence in her own actions, the little girl had almost neared her endangered companion when she put a little too much pressure on a particularly fragile part of the hard surface and her hand went straight through. From that spot a crack the width of a hair spread terrifyingly quickly

Right

Towards

Jess.

@Jess Malters

Reducio

Don't mind me, just experimenting with colors
Oh, and sorry this took so long to finish. I've been having a bit of writer's block, unfortunately. Hopefully that's all over now and my replies will be more consistent.

A flash of annoyance crossed Jess's mind as she heard Rhea call out for the girl not to move, as if she thought Jess had been planning to spontaneously start jumping up and down on the ice, though it was quickly swallowed by fear. As the girl looked around, weighing her situation, she felt this fear rise up her throat, choking her with the thoughts of what could come. She tried to tell herself that falling through the ice wouldn't even be too bad, anyways, even if it did happen, but, for once, simply telling her brain to calm down didn't actually help her stifle her ever-growing worry. Typically, Jess was a reasonable person, but that reason had been locked away from her, kept cruelly out of reach by her fear as if she had left it right at the tip of the ice, feet of fragile, begging to break, expanse stretching out between it and her. Try as she might, she couldn't think of a way to get back to the shore safely without risking falling into the lake.

Fortunately, though, Rhea seemed to operate much better under pressure than Jess could, and, as she listened to her words, the Hufflepuff faintly realized what it was that she had been subconsciously remembering yet unable to bring to the front of her mind.

The winter before she came to Hogwarts, about a year ago now, a deep layer of snow had fallen in Jess's city. Eager to enjoy the cold while it still lasted, the girl had gone with her family to the park, where the sea of ice was wide and undisturbed by footprints or dirt from the curbs. When she first walked on the snow, Jess's feet had sunk straight through the deceptively compressible surface, but then her father had had an idea. Her parents had stood on either side of Jess, holding her up, and allowed her to gingerly place both her feet on the snow at once. Though the powder seemed seconds away from collapsing, with the surface area of Jess's weight spread out over the snow, it hadn't collapsed, and the girl had been able to stand atop the white land, even taking a few tiny steps before finally sinking through.

This winter came swimming to the front of Jess's memory now, and she watched, her hope rekindled, as Rhea spread her own body out over the ice and began to crawl over to her. In her eagerness at remembering something that could actually help, Jess did not even pause to process the fact that if Rhea was moving towards her, she was moving away from the shore. Away from safety. Away from the place to get help.

And, as she would come to realize in the next few, yet impossibly disastrous, seconds, help was something the two of them would need. One moment Rhea's hand was above the ice, steadily moving as she made her way, slowly but surely, towards Jess. The next, it was in the water, and a crack was spreading across the ice. It could have gone anywhere, this crack. It could have even stayed contained to a small circle surrounding the place where Rhea's hand had gone through. But no. No, through some twist of fate clearly meant to mock Jess for daring to hope that the other girl's plan might actually work, the crack speared through the ice like an arrow shot at Jess, flying straight and true.

The crack was thin, however, Jess yelled at her panicking brain as her breath hitched. It was thin, and it was short, stopping about a foot away from where she knelt, not daring to move for fear of disrupting the momentary stability of the ice. Maybe she could get around this ice. She couldn't exactly just stay here for all eternity, waiting for the ice to thaw, after all, and with the ice now broken directly next to Rhea, it wouldn't be safe for the other girl to try to move either. Already on her knees, Jess took a deep breath, and started sliding her legs along the ice to go around the crack.

It worked. Somehow, it worked. At least, for the first couple of steps- well, slides- Jess's knees moved along the ice with no sign of the instability down below. But then, a mistake. A momentary lapse of caution, brought on by the hope growing exponentially as the distance covered successfully by the Hufflepuff stretched, leading to a bit of a far slide. A quick slide. A harsh slide, one paired with a bit more pressure on the knee to make up for the newly added distance between it and Jess's other leg.

The girl felt it, that shift in her body's balance, and her eyes widened. Time seemed to slow, the moment between Jess's knee hitting the ice and it breaking through stretching itself out into infinity. The ice still felt hard, solid, but there was a pressure to it that had not been there before, almost as if the ice itself was fighting to stay together, to not break apart. But as all things, good and bad, new and old, frozen and broken through, must come to an end, so too did the ice's resistance meet its end.

With a decisive snap, like all the strain the ice had been keeping to stay together, just stay together, had suddenly been released, the pressure broke through. The impact of the force spread, the large hole made by Jess's knee growing out and out, first just in a crack and then a million tiny little branches that spread from it. The lines widened into breaks, the breaks into cracks, and the cracks into ravines. Jess only had time to suck in a frantic breath, startling in its harsh cold upon her throat, before the ice beneath her collapsed.

Her mouth open, without time even to scream, Jess plunged into the dark, swirling, freezing waters of the lake, the shards of ice floating down all around her like a sea of broken pieces.

She couldn’t breathe.

Any air in her lungs had left her body in a swift puff and become momentarily visible in the cool air before vanishing in the breeze. Rhea’s arm shot out to grab nothing, and she nearly fell flat on her stomach. What had just happened? One moment Jess was there, safely crawling across the ice towards land, and the next she was replaced by a gaping hole. Was she dead? Could a person die that fast in frigid water? If the fall had been unexpected, Jess could’ve inhaled too deeply and/or lost consciousness. Wizards could bring people back from the dead, right? Right?

For a moment, time seemed to stop, and all she could register was terror. Then the reality of the situation came crashing down on her. There wasn’t time to be asking questions when this friendly stranger’s life was on the line; she needed to actually do something. Anything would be better than remaining here, on her hands and knees, one hand outstretched, as someone drowned a few metres away from her and she remained paralyzed like a fool.

Rhea began crawling as fast as her legs could carry her. She felt so stiff, yet so quavery; it was as if she was a second from physically falling apart. The ice stung her bare palms and even her knees through the thick pants she was wearing. She was well aware that she should be more careful: no one was immune to the inconsistency in the ice’s ability to hold up, and in a moment she could be just as gone as Jess. Just as plunged into the icy depths of the lake.

She scrambled to the edge of the hole and gripped the jagged rim, leaning over to peer inside. Through the merciless, seemingly endless depths she glimpsed several shards of ice still swirling around in a downward spiral, as well as the edge of what looked like a jacket.

Jess.

Her hands tightened around the ice and she pulled up a slab. It came away in an uneven triangle and from the sharp angle at the top a crack began to spread. Rhea knew she was moments from breaking the surface and experiencing the pain of the cold firsthand, and for a half a second she paused, letting another wave of terror wash over her. Nothing like this had ever happened to her. She had never had to prove herself in crisis, or risk her own life to save someone else’s, or have anything this grave rely on her to turn out fine. She was being stupid. This was all her fault.

The ice broke beneath her before she could even continue doing it manually, and she just had time to inhale before her breath hitched in her throat and she went under.

Momentarily there was nothing: utter silence, stillness, as the air of fast-paced panic from the surface slowed as she plunged through the depths, and then the pain caught up with her, and it was agony, an icy burn, bitterly cold and unrelenting. She could feel the water filling her coat, her shirt, her ears and eyes... disoriented and panicked, she opened them, and watched the bubbles float from her nose as she exhaled, trying to get some sense of which way was up. The pain was impossible to ignore, and she had trouble thinking about anything else; catching a glimpse of Jess, she twisted her body and propelled herself in that general direction, cringing from the horrible frigid agony that seemed to have crawled beneath her skin.

There she was. There was the girl. Rhea's paralyzed hands somehow found and grabbed the fabric of a jacket that wasn't hers; she found a better grip and, with all her might, propelled herself upwards. The water stung her face - she could feel it pressing in on her ears, her nose; her chest ached, and she was so close to inhaling; the image of ice filling her lungs made her clench her aching jaw in discomfort. Then, her face broke the lake surface, and she gasped, inhaling the cool air into her lungs. Everything hurt. The aching effects of dragging another human body upwards against the gravitational pull and the freezing water were already beginning to make her biceps sore. By that point, she wasn't even sure if she still clutched some part of Jess in between her numb fingers.

@Jess Malters