With several blasts from the whistle, the Hogwarts Express pulled out of the Hogsmeade station and started on its journey back to London.  It almost felt like a miracle, but the school year was over and he'd survived.  And, had managed to avoid expulsion.  OWLs were behind them and it would be several weeks before the results arrived.  Worrying about the results and what they'd mean for the upcoming year was pointless at this point.  With Key Stage 4 SATs still months away, there was no real pressing urgency now.  There were no parents waiting at home to question him about what he'd learned in his literature or european history classes. 

In fact, for the first time in as long as Sasha could remember, there were absolutely no academic worries looming over his head.  For the first time, he also didn't have to worry about catching an overnight connecting train to continental Europe once he reached London.  Sasha could actually lean back, stare out the window and enjoy the trip. 

It only took about fifteen minutes for that to get really boring. 

Sasha pushed himself to his feet and had just tugged his shoulder bag down from the luggage rack when the compartment door slid open.  He glanced towards the door, offered a hesitant but friendly grin in Sophie's direction and took his seat again, fully expecting her to recognize him and move on to another compartment.  He only withdrew fun, non-academic oriented items from his bag: primarily a full page sketchbook.  From between the pages, he withdrew a couple pieces of printer paper and leaned back in his seat as he looked over the pages. 

FREEDOM! It was so close she could almost taste it; from across the lake to the station she had been almost holding her breath, waiting for some cataclysmic event to bar her from the long winding lazy days of summer. Only...nothing had happened, there she was boarding the train and nothing had exploded, no fist fights, no duels, nothing. It felt oddly serene - if a little sad; and it would be sad this time. This last time of riding the train with her sisters, with Chance, with Fauna. So much was changing and so fast! Her own sisters felt like aliens from another planet. Emily was going to spend exactly one week at home before doing a year of traveling and Ruby? Well, Ruby was going to America. She apparently had a deep seeded need to put as much distance between herself and her "old life" as humanly possible. It would apparently take an ocean to satisfy this need...

And Sophie just couldn't deal with it, she was going to avoid it. She was going to avoid the goodbyes, the changes, the awfulness that felt like it was welling up in her stomach for as long as possible. Sh would avoid them so long she might not even get to make them if she could. There were lots of things that had changed about her over the last year (she was much quieter for instance) but her aversion to endings was not one of them. For Sophie the ending was always more desolate and sad, somehow outweighing hope of a new beginning. It was as though the idea of losing lasted longer than the newness of "new". Things could only be new once; they could (and often were) lost forever. This was a stark contrast to her normally optimistic and sunny personality. But then maybe having your mother be eaten by a werewolf and your sisters scatter to the corners of the Earth would bring out the pessimist in anyone. Maybe.

It was with this jumble of excitement, fear, loathing of leaving, and sadness that had her restlessly searching for a compartment that contained no one she had spent the past year loving. Ideally she'd have found a nice comfy place to exist all by herself. Of course the first seemingly empty compartment she found was not actually empty at all. It housed a Sasha  Schlagenweit. A Sasha  Schlagenweit she had not often acknowledged since his stunt that landed Fauna in lockup. It struck her as  strange that he should look so... benign. She hadn't ever really looked at him before (thus her inability to understand the big fuss over him and his super dreamy face). In the course of the last year she had seen him both as a victim and a villain. Neither picture was entirely correct and yet both held elements of truth. What had happened to his family was tragic; what he had done to Fauna was evil -more so in looking back at the events of that night; Fauna could have died...but maybe he realized that.

For all the roles Sasha had played in the drama of Sophie's life; from the fights with Fergie and Fig to wanting to lambaste him for what he'd done to someone she considered family... they had not ever really held an actual conversation. It was perhaps this, as much as her desire to avoid the good-byes waiting to be said, that prompted her to slip inside the compartment and quietly close the door behind her. She was sure Fergie would stumble upon them eventually; the two seemed most often joined at the hip these days. But for just a moment there was only the rhythmic noise of the train pulling from the station and gathering speed as she sat down across from him. How did one start a conversation with a person that they had professed to loath entirely? Or broach the subject of forgiveness when you were not the wronged party and perhaps the other person did not even know that you had anything to forgive? Did you muster the words and just blurt them out or was there a form of etiquette Kit had never mentioned to her?

Curled up on the seat, her feet resting flatly against the cushion as she hugged her knees she considered Sasha the boy verses Sasha the idea. Of  course this meant she was staring, which meant that she was probably making him vastly uncomfortable if he had even noticed because he seemed rather absorbed in whatever leaflet it was reading. She thought about bringing up Art Club or maybe she'd just start talking and talking because there was a time in her life when that was what she had been best at. She had drowned out uncomfortable questions with a lot of noise. Everything was loud, everything was brash, everything exploded in bursts of crimson and gold. She stomped in her big Sophie boots and made a scene. That was how it had been, that had been how she had been... and now? Now she was the sort of person who sat and stared at some hazy middle distance instead of starting up a conversation, until finally, "D'you ever think life would be easier if we just paused to ask one another why; instead of just assuming we've got it all sussed out"?

The seat across from him rustled and creaked slightly, drawing Sasha's attention up from the course map in his lap.  The compartment was still otherwise empty except for the Gryffindor who sat curled up on the seat across from him.  She hadn't said anything and didn't appear to be on the verge of doing so.  She was just sitting there, staring at him, like he was ... he was some sort of enigma that she had to puzzle through.  Sasha quickly dropped his own gaze and shifted, uncomfortably, under the weight of her stare.  He didn't know her nearly well enough to know how he was supposed to interpret that stare and getting up and walking out seemed too impolite - even for him.  So, he fidgeted in his discomfort, glancing first towards the compartment door and then towards the trees flying past the window. 

He expected yelling and was waiting for it to start.  He wouldn't have blamed her, either.  To be honest, he would have preferred that to the cold silence.  Then, at least, he figured she'd move on after she'd said her fill.  Though, perhaps, this was one of those circumstances where he was supposed to be finding that way to exert himself.  To separate himself from his peers and what they thought of him.  He still wasn't sure what he exactly Kronos had managed that so well but he was definitely starting to feel the benefit.

Sasha turned away from the window and looked back down at the page in his lap, trying to distract himself as much as possible from Sophie's stare. 

Finally, she spoke.  Sasha looked up and across the compartment at her, replaying the comment in his head several times as he tried to guess what, exactly, she was asking.  "I don't know,' Sasha answered vaguely at first.  Was she talking about him?  About what had happened with Blake?  About her own loss.  He shook his head slightly and shrugged.  "I don't think everybody has everything figured out.  But-"  He hesitated a moment.  WIthout know what she was asking or what she was fishing for, it was impossible to tell how much trouble any given answer would get him into.  "Maybe- sometimes it's hard to trust that when you do ask, people will tell you the truth." 

Maybe people didn't want to tell you the truth.  Or, they didn't know what the truth was or were in some way incapable of offering the truth.  Sometimes it just became hard to know who to trust or how to take that leap of faith. 

Sasha cast another glance out the window and shrugged his shoulders.  "But, I guess I've never thought about it, no."

Sophie watched him carefully; it seemed strange to her that the awkward blonde she was sort of conversing with could be the hate-monger who had nearly gotten Fauna killed. He seemed so...lonely and maybe a little lost - like outside of textbooks he didn't have any answers at all. That was an interesting thought, actually, because from what she had seen for all his Ravenclaw intelleigence Sasha's social skills left a lot to be desired. He could understand physics yet he lacked common communication skills and the ability to relate to others. At least that was how it looked from the point Sophie was standing at, the point where maybe she realized Sasha was just a boy - like every other boy.

"I don't think anyone really knows...anything; at least not for certain when it comes to other people," so this was out it was going to go; she was going to maybe try and talk her way through this because it was better than facing all ending that would happen on Platform 9 & 3/4. "I mean how do you even define a lie, really? Outside of basic mathematics and concrete science; what constitutes the truth because it seems to be different depending on the person you're talking to". It was hazy moral territory, there were things she believed to be true; things she had faith in, and certainly there was evidence to support her belief - but there was also evidence to disprove it as well. How did one filter through the "facts"?

"Take you and I, for example," she kept her voice light as she spoke, brown eyes turned toward the landscape as it rushed by, "I know, in your mind, you had lots of reasons to do what you did to Fauna. In my mind I've had three dozen fights with you about it, dispelling all the things you could have possibly thought you knew that lead you to make such a disastrous and hateful accusation". Sophie was really good at having fights with people in her head, she liked fighting with them there because she rarely lost; at least until her conscience got involved. Her voice lacked accusation though; it was a softly spoken admittance of her own guilt.

"Maybe if I had really asked you why instead of just assuming I knew Fergie and I wouldn't have fought so much..." her voice trailed off as she rested the side of her head against the seat back and closed her eyes. "Sometimes righteous indignation gets in the way of making good choices," this thought was shared more for her benefit than his. She knew that she was most guilty of this, of holding onto anger that ate up all possible good things that existed in her. "I was so angry at you, for so long...but not really you-you, the idea I had of you. The idea of the person who had hurt someone I loved out of spite, but maybe it wasn't spite". Chewing her bottom lip she finally looked at him, she was probably scaring the shit out of him.

It begged the question; what's worse a screaming Sophie or a quiet one? "I blamed you, for my mum being there," she hadn't ever said that out loud to anyone, "I blamed Fauna too, like in my head the logic was Mum wouldn't have stayed if Fauna hadn't gotten herself into the whole mess and she wouldn't have gotten into the whole mess if you hadn't..." her voice trailed off and she looked down, "I had to have someone to blame - it was like there were so many people to and not enough at the same time". She had had months to puzzle this out; but it probably sounded mad to someone hearing it for the first time. "Then I realized no amount of finger pointing would bring her back, ever". So cheerful.

'I know it a might sound like complete crap or like I'm utterly daft; but I spent all my time pinging between pitying you and hating you. In the end I guess none of it really matters because I had to forgive us both anyway," and there was the part that would sound really crazy (and maybe she was really crazy), "Not because you wanted to be forgiven, but because in order to move on I had to forgive you for all the things you did or I thought you did; and I had to forgive myself because I thought you did them and I made all these conflicts in my life worse because I never just stopped to ask you why". Chewing on her thumbnail she hazarded another look at him and tried not to look like a loon, which was maybe harder than expected.

During the silence that followed his words, Sasha's discomfort grew and suddenly, though the train wasn't more than a half an hour from the Hogsmeade station, Sasha found himself suddenly missing the constant busyness of school.  How many times had Sasha started to feel the overwhelming weight of the events that year only to force them back with a strong preoccupation with some history of magic essay that was due or runes exam he had to prepare for.  And now, sitting in this train car, remembering where he'd been and who he'd been with a year ago while listening to everything that Sophie was voicing, he was filled with the profound urge to grab his bag and tug out some homework assignment or some paper he needed to read. 

But, he couldn't.  All of that was packed away in the depths of his bags.  His distractions were limited to his sketchbook and the course map in his lap and neither possessed the depth necessary to escape Sophie's words.  Sasha shifted in his seat and leaned his head against the window, staring vaguely out into the passing scenery.  Baldur was sprawled on the floor under Sasha's feet, resting with his back against the bank of seats the Ravenclaw was sitting at.   

Sophie blamed him for her mother's death.  Sasha blinked and his chest tightened, shaking his head.  "She ... she was there because of Bla- Fauna?" Sasha asked, quietly, a slight break to his voice.  As if he needed to carry the burden of responsibility for someone else's death.  And, a classmate's parent at that.  He wasn't quite sure how well he could handle that realization. 

Sasha's shoulders hunched up in a dismissive shrug and he chewed his lower lip in an attempt to conceal the quiver in his chin.  "I -"  He hesitated, unsure if Sophie was really looking for an explanation and well aware that anything he might offer seemed petty and irrelevant.  He doubted she really wanted to hear him attempt to defend himself anymore than Fauna had.  Nor did he even want to offer excuses.  They were just explanations.  Nothing more.  "I - it wasn't spite."  Despite what it might have looked like to outsiders, he hadn't written the Ministry as a personal attack against Fauna.  He'd honestly, truly believed he'd been doing the appropriate thing.  That he was helping keep people safe in doing so.

"Do you ever find yourself trying harder and harder to do the right thing so you don't make the same mistakes and ..." Sasha's voice broke again and he leaned his head back.  "- No matter how hard you try, it keeps happening."  Professor Trishna had tried to convince Sasha he wasn't somehow cursed but that was still sometimes hard to believe.

"You know," Sasha finally looked away from the window and across at Sophie.  Perhaps he was supposed to be doing more to hide his tears but, at this point, he would have had to leave the compartment to do so.  And, so far, there was only Sophie in this compartment.  Who knew who else he'd run into out there.  "A year ago, it was Ava who'd sat in this compartment with me.  She - She was herself.  Normal."  She'd sprawled herself over Sasha's lap and teased him about the quidditch cup game. 

"You know, they think she'd been imperioused," Sasha admitted.  "I mean - I didn't really know her before then even though they think we're half-siblings.  I just-"  He was distracting himself with details.  "I kept thinking something was wrong when she got back - she wasn't herself.  I kept telling her she needed to tell someone but she refused.  And, got angry.  Crucioed me when I tried to stop her.  When she walked to her death." 

The shepherd pushed himself to his feet and climbed up on to seat next to Sasha, laying his head in the boy's lap.  Sasha rested his hand on the dog's head and ran his fingers subconsciously over the dog's ears.  "I got my parents and sister killed.  If ... if I'd said something.  To someone about Ava - even if it made her mad at me ... maybe.  You know?  I didn't ... accuse Fauna of being a werewolf.  I told who I thought I was supposed to tell that I thought someone more qualified than me should investigate.  Just in case.  I assumed they'd question her and if ... you know ... she wasn't than it'd be obvious enough to them.  I didn't want them to lock her up.  I ... didn't want anyone to get hurt.  I just couldn't stand the thought of someone getting hurt again when I did nothing.  And yet, it still happened." 

With an urgency that was probably quite obvious to onlookers, Sasha quickly pulled his sketchbook towards him, desperate for something to distract himself with until he could force all those thoughts and emotions back under control." 

Sophie had always had an empathetic heart and been able to read people - sometimes her temper got the best of her or she let her anger get in the way of what she knew she was seeing; but sitting there looking at Sasha there was no denying how broken he seemed over it all. So broken in fact, that he only heard part of what she was trying to tell him in her own strange way - which was that she knew she had been wrong to blame him. She considered for the first time how few people would have wanted to have anything to do with him at this point. Did he have any friends left at all? His year certainly had been laden with life altering drama.

Sophie wasn't even sure she could keep track of all the things that had happened to him - from the Neely and Fergie debacle to being suspended and everything that came after. Who did Sasha talk to? Sophie had Chance and Lucas and any other number of people who, if she had needed to fall apart in all the weeks since her mother's death, would have gladly caught her. Sure she'd been let down by some people but in the grand scheme of things the numbers were on the side of people who wanted to be there. It made her feel lonely for him. She no longer needed to constantly be the center of focus but everyone needed someone.

Twisting the ring on her finger she gave him a meaningful look, "Well, yes, partly she was - but that's not..." she trailed off and turned to face him fully, "My mum was kind of a bear. Fauna is, was like one of her cubs - same as Fergie and any of our friends really. She didn't trust the WCU; she does-didn't think a lot of their techniques were humane. So partly; yes she was there to make sure Fauna was safe, but" she paused, trying to find the words to best make him understand, "The Unit is always understaffed; there were more cases than usual on the eleventh - that's why I said blamed, past tense, I realized I was...wrong".

No three words were harder for Sophie to say than those. She hated being wrong, she hated it more when she had to admit that she was wrong. "There is no way to ever know what would have happened if Fauna hadn't been there - but she didn't die trying to protect Fauna, she died trying to help someone who had taken the tainted Wolfsbane. There is no one to point the finger at Sasha; not really, not even the person who killed her because he had no control. His actions weren't his own. That is what I've had to make peace with. This horrible thing happened in my life and there is no one I can blame, that I spit venom at".

Her voice got quiet and she looked down at her hands, repeating her earlier words, "And even if I could placing blame doesn't change anything. No one can suffer more than we already have, than we make ourselves; I really believe that". Her big brown eyes were sad as she watched the boy sort of collapse in on himself; He had made mistakes - but in the last year everyone she knew had made mistakes. It struck her as strange, thinking that Sasha had a guilt complex to rival her own. If her righteous anger hadn't already been completely deflated by her own doing; sitting there watching him would have taken the wind right out of her sails.

Rehashing any of the rights or wrongs  would be beating a dead horse; it wouldn't change anything. She grew quiet as he explained, or tried to. The thing about his logic was that he treated everyone the same; as if all reactions to inquiry would be met with such resistance.... and maybe it would have. He and Fauna didn't have the best track record; but Sophie felt the need to reiterate, "You're discounting the fact that Fauna has always believed in the Registry. Always; because while it is a very flawed system it's the only thing we have keeping anyone remotely safe". So maybe she wasn't above kicking a dead horse; it was important.

Sighing she rubbed her neck and in a move that could have been a disastrous mistake actually sat down next to him. He was so sad she had to do something, he wasn't Chance or Lucas so she didn't have an exact comforting strategy in place. She was out of her element but she could try. Tilting the sketch book down she tried to get him to at least look at her for a moment, "The point I was trying to make is... the only way out is forgiveness; is finding a way to have faith in the best of people because if you're always looking back you never move forward. You have to stop blaming yourself because it doesn't change anything".

"Would ... would she gone to the Ministry if Blake hadn't been there?" 

Sasha understood what Sophie was trying to do.  He really did.  And, he did appreciate it and he respected that, for her, this was part of the healing process.  More so than many others in their class, he shared an understanding with her as to how heavy, painful and ... individual ... the weight of loss could be.  If that was what she needed to do, he would- could accept and support that. 

And, he knew he wasn't solely responsible for any of the events that had transpired over the past year.  He'd already long accepted it wasn't his fault the Ministry had deemed it necessary to drag Blake into the WCU to verify she hadn't been turned.  It certainly wasn't his fault that that Ashford fellow had broken into his home and he certainly hadn't had anything to do with the curses that had ended Ava's life.  But, he acknowledged his active role in each of those events and he had to take responsibility for them.  Didn't he?  He'd been raised Catholic and the concept of repentance for the wrongs he'd committed had been drilled into him from a young age - the greater the wrong doing, the deeper the repentance.  Simply forgiving himself just seemed far too easy - far too ... simple.  One could forgive himself for forgetting a birthday or even saying something hurtful out of anger. 

"That's hard to imagine," Sasha admitted as he shrugged his shoulders, seizing the opportunity to distract himself from the topic of guilt and forgiveness.  Even if talking about mothers was only marginally less discomforting.  "My mother was anything but bear-like.  She didn't really bother herself much with us.  When we weren't in boarding school, I guess it was Edith - our nanny - that was more protective."  Sasha's mother had given birth to him and his sisters.  At that point, she'd believed she'd fulfilled her motherly duties and could turn her attentions back to more important matters.  Like socializing with friends. 

Sasha left the comments about werewolves, themselves, alone.  He knew better than to comment on all that was said about the werewolves' culpability in all of this.  That wasn't - and likely wouldn't ever be something they'd see eye-to-eye on.  The werewolves' actions, though, had been their own.  One could potentially argue that their actions had been more their own than their drugged complacency during most full moons.  How many times did you give a rabid dog the opportunity to bite someone simply because they weren't acting as they normally would?  He wasn't sure he'd ever forgive Foley for what she'd done; it mattered little whether she'd been in control or not.  But, far fewer of his classmates knew that he'd been attacked that night than knew about Blake.  Sasha had purposefully kept that information quiet. 

Sasha froze as Sophie got up and took a seat next to him, flinching slightly when she moved the sketchbook down.  He remained stationary for several long minutes as his mind struggled to make sense of this recent turn of events: not only the words being spoken but the person who'd elected to enter the compartment and speak them to him.  He knew he couldn't discount them out of hand; he owed her more respect than that. Something prodded hard at his elbow, breaking him out of his moment of uncertainty and stirring his body into motion.  Sasha had only been partly aware that Baldur had moved out of the seat when Sophie had sat down.  But, he was now sitting at Sasha's side, nudging forcibly at the boy's elbow and forcing him to move. 

The Ravenclaw ran a hand over the dog's head and took a deep breath in an attempt to compel his body to relax.  "I don't know how to do that," he finally admitted.  "Stop blaming myself.  Especially when they did.  And still do.  Blake.  My parents and sister.  Ava.  How can I rightfully stop blaming myself when they still do? Isn't that ... Do I have a right to forgive myself before they do?"  And, wasn't that the catch-22 in all of this?  Ava would never be able to forgive him.  Neither would his parents or sister.  Or Judith.  And, he really didn't know what to do with that. 

"Are you going home?"  Sasha asked, his hand still running in almost hypnotic, rhythmic regularity over the dog's head.  "Is your father there?"  It occurred to Sasha he didn't even know if Sophie's father was in the picture.  Actually, he didn't know that much about her. 

Sophie considered many things as she watched Sasha. She felt like she was seeing him for the first time - and it wasn't one of those silly romantic notions that caught so many people up about him. No, she was just seeing a boy who had never been... properly loved, apparently. His cool aloof poise (which she had often mistaken as a cold dead heart) made infinite more sense know that she knew about his mother. She could hardly wrap her mind around it. She new not everyone had a mother like she had, or for that matter in his better days a father like hers either. It wasn't perfect, there had been moments that Sophie had questioned her place in the family, felt like an accident rather than a surprise. She often fretted that she wasn't as talented, or smart, or sweet as her siblings... but they had all always loved her. Physical and emotional contact was not something she had been deprived of - and it was what had formed her into the person she was today. She couldn't quite wrap her head around the fact a mother could want so little to do with their own child when her mother had been a mother to the masses (from the Werewolves she worked with to taking in people like Chance).

She didn't say anything though, she just nodded. She felt as though the fact Sasha spoke so rarely of his actual life, the things he felt  that to interrupt him might mean he'd never say it to anyone. It wasn't like she had answers for him of course; but she could listen. She really was good at that now, much better than she had been at any other time in her life. She was also good at hearing between the words; the emotion behind them. Chewing her bottom lip, she tried not to state too intensely at him. She knew it made him uncomfortable. The problem was Sophie really only knew how to make people feel better with hugs and closeness. It worked with Lucas and Chance. It worked with most everybody really - because when most people were sad they needed to be physically reminded that you were there and you weren't going to go anywhere. She felt like Sasha needed the latter, the feeling like he could actually talk about things and that he didn't have to be alone; but she also felt like he wouldn't know what to do with it if she were to just offer it up. It was a tricky situation. She didn't want to make him more uncomfortable...but sometimes discomfort meant growth. Healing almost always meant feeling worse before you felt better.

"I don't think..." she paused for a moment to gather her words carefully, "I don't think any of them blame you. I mean... I don't know about Fauna, but your family and Ava? I don't think they think it was your fault. You tried to help her; and..." she just shook her head, "I don't think people can depart to the other side still holding onto blame. Anger and blame, the bad feelings... it traps them in limbo. They have to learn to work through it, to let go to get to where ever it is spirits go when it's all over. So they have to forgive you eventually; and I would think sooner rather than later," maybe it was an overly simplistic view of something like death and the afterlife. Maybe she didn't really know what she was talking about - but he seemed so sad and lost she wanted to give him something to at least think about. Turning to look at him, she placed a bit more distance between them as she brought her knee up onto the seat, her features pensive, "Forgiveness, really, isn't about anyone but ourselves. We have to forgive not for the other person's sake but for our own. The anger and hostility eats away at the better parts of us".

Resting her chin against her knee, her brown eyes focused on some hazy middle distance again as she considered her own battle with various kinds of forgiveness, "It gunks everything up, all the beautiful things that our hearts and spirits can be. It doesn't mean forgiving is easy, jus' means it's worth it". The truth of this was compounded more when he asked about her father. Duncan and Johnny were two people she was having a hard time forgiving, seeing past their flaws and their inability to hold it together, to keep the family together. It felt dishonest to just act like home was going to be a good place to be. Sasha had been open enough with her that not returning the sentiment felt like the worst sort of insult. "He...will be there I suppose. We haven't talked much since..." her voice trailed off and she turned her eyes toward the ceiling off the train compartment. "It's hard for him you know? She was his best friend, really". There was a sad half smile that formed on her lips as she looked down to her boots, "He's not all there anymore, but it'll be alright. He's got the band; being part of our Valentine's Day concert really renewed people's interest in Mandrake Siren; he's putting together a tour at the moment". She tried to sound pleased by this and hoped she didn't fail miserably.