batting practice private

Silence.

Anyone who knew Kitty, even in passing, would have known that she hated silence. She had for a long time, now, really. Consciously, it had been around three years since she decided any volume but high was unacceptable, but subconsciously, she had always been a loud kid. She yelled and shouted and downright screeched during tantrums, she talked too loud during rehearsals and made microphones peak on stage. More than once, her mother would hae chastised her for it, blaming a second place finish on a word spoken too loud and a judge’s scrunched up face when hearing feedback.

Kitty did not understand it then and she did not understand it now — this need for silence, not the dislike of microphone feedback (oops, but she was, like, 7). She found it unpleasant. Deafening, ironically. When she was younger, when she was a dancer, she scratched the itch it left behind with movement: Tchaikovsky was a kind of sound, after all, she could live with that. She talked during rehearsal and during hair and make-up. In Ilvermorny, too, she talked: when her parents got quieter, she got louder. Literally and figuratively.

It was funny, Kitty thought, eyes laser focused on the bottle of water in front of her. She had just spent her summer being loud: part in an effort to piss her parents off, and part in an effort to… uh, well, also piss her parents off, but this time not by disrupting their silence, but by skipping any opportunity to see them, even in passing. Now, she was trying, deliberately, to stay silent.

She was failing. Unsurprisingly.

“Wingardium…” she focused, trying to mouth the words and cursing under her breath when she found that they escaped her lips again. Verbally. Kitty took a deep breath, trying to remember what all the books about nonverbal magic said. Let everything else fall away. Something something, meditative state, all that.

Kitty closed her eyes, and tried to think of nothing. She could still feel the sun on the back of her neck, grass underneath her fingers. It would get cold again soon; she would miss the summer.

The past two months had consisted of days that stretched; sticky toffee and melted marshmallow. They’d start on someone’s bedroom or living room floor; rarely in her own bed. Then, with a bummed ride from Elsie, who she used to go to camp with, turn to hot concrete that ran acrid in summer sun, before they all filed into a dusty garage. They’d yell into microphones. Someone’s mom would start yelling at them for being too loud. They’d end with ice cream, or cheap alcohol that Jonah (though the name on his ID said Peter) bought for them, or both. They’d end, passed out under a thin blanket.

She would miss them, Kitty considered. She would miss not knowing what time it was. She hoped Elsie was doing well, and Jonah-slash-Peter, and the rest of the band, too. Muggle high school seemed shitty. She considered sending a letter. She wished they could be there at her 17th birthday. It was coming up, now, faster and faster, her adulthood looming on the horizon, getting bigger—

Right. She was getting distracted again.

“Wingardium Leviosa,” Kitty muttered — quiet, but still too loud — with a swish and flick of the wrist, and though the bottle lifted itself up, that was not the point. The point was too be silent. She groaned (loudly), flopping back onto her back in the grass. The bottle fell with a thud as her concentration broke; she did not care. She scrunched up her face, the sun falling past leaves, dappling her face in spots, and getting into her eyes.

The point wasn’t to levitate a bottle. She was levitating things left and right as an eleven year old; distinctly remembered being 11, levitating her ink pot over to a friend, and it spilling all over both of their uniforms. The point was to do it quietly. Silently. And though Kitty knew — really, she did know — that it was unreasonable to expect herself to be able to do it after a few weeks of practice… it was frustrating. She had started with Lumos, maybe three or four weeks ago; and after maybe three or four weeks of failing, had moved down to Wingardium Leviosa, hoping it would be easier. It hadn’t been, so far.

For a while, she just laid there, squinting at the sun in disapproval. As if it was its fault that she couldn’t quite get it. Then, right as she was about to sit back up, Kitty heard the voice of her friend: equally warm as the sun, but laced with teasing.

“Damn, even when trying, you can’t manage to shut up?”

Kitty’s head rolled over to glance at the offending friend with a glare. It wasn’t all that serious, admittedly: anyone could tell that he was being sarcastic, with a huge grin and a tilted head. And, mostly in good fun, she pouted, and rolled her eyes. “Fuck off.”

“I mean, come on,” he replied in kind, with a laugh — that was admittedly, infectious, “that has to be, like, a condition or something.” And it was nice; really. She was back in Ilvermorny. With friends. Laying out on the grounds with other students shuffling and chatting about; a mix of excitement for the new semester and disappointment with summer’s quick end. She was frustrated, yeah, but it was just ribbing.

Kitty wasn’t angry. Honest. But, banter was banter, and she would not be outdone. With a faux-offended gasp, her hand tightened slightly on her wand. Swish and flick, and, verbally this time: “Wingardium Leviosa,” the wand was pointed at the water bottle she had just been practicing on. It was one of those reusable ones, steel and rather weighty; Elsie had gotten it for Kitty after a rager (and hangover) so bad that Kitty constantly needing water became a joke among the band. It lifted itself into the air — with considerable ease, now that Kitty was actually enunciating — and, with a wave of Kitty’s shoulder, it was flung through the air.

Now, Kitty had decent aim. She played for Thunderbird’s Quodpot team for a while, and accuracy mattered, considering they were handling explosives. Additionally, she had plenty of practice with the Levitation charm. It wasn’t a hard one, after all. She did not account for the fact she was half rolled over on the grass, between sitting and laying down; perhaps that was her undoing. Perhaps it was the combination of all of these that made it so easy to overestimate her own abilities in flinging the bottle. She had meant it for her friend, and had meant the blow to be light: maybe so it would hit his chest and bounce off. Leave a bruise if they were unlucky. Unfortunately, that was not what happened.

Unfortunately, Kitty missed.

She winced before it hit her unintended target: some boy that had been just enough to be in the vicinity of her and the group. There was a sound when it hit: a clang and something awful and weirdly wet that Kitty hoped was just the water inside and not something worse, like bone or blood. Either way, the impact certainly didn’t look pleasant.

“Shit,” Kitty cursed. She was almost shouting, really, turning pale with far bigger issues to deal with than being quiet. Her limbs tangled as she rushed to stand up and all but run towards the boy who she had just hit. “Are you okay?! I’m so sorry—”