It was late November but one might not know from a quick glance outside.  Scattered spots of rain had drifted through during the day but now, as evening drew nearer, the clouds had fled and honey-warm sunlight blanketed the grounds.  They had an hour, maybe an hour and a half before darkness would come and this could very well be the last decent day of the year.  As soon as classes let out for the afternoon, Sasha had dashed quickly up to the Ravenclaw Tower to fetch Baldur before making his way out onto the grounds. 

Warm sunlight was, probably, a bit of an exaggeration.  The air still held a bite but the sun, itself, felt brilliant in contrast.  Delighting in the chill, Baldur wiggled his way through the front door as soon as they were opened wide enough and loped out towards the open lawns.  Sasha followed at a leisurely pace. 

The Ravenclaw was halfway across the lawns when he recognized the Hufflepuff sitting alone, not too far from the water's edge.  Sasha stopped and watched for a moment, more than half tempted to simply turn and walk away.  He hadn't seen her since they'd been dragged their separate ways by their respective Heads of House and Sasha certainly hadn't been going out of his way to find her.  He had no idea what to say to her and he could only speculate about what she thought of him.  He simply hadn't been ready to face that, yet.  He still wasn't and, if he were being honest, he wasn't sure he'd ever be. 

More than willing to take the easy way out, Sasha turned to move off to find another spot but Baldur had already noticed Sasha watching the girl.  Curious to investigate what had grabbed his master's attention so fully, the shepherd trotted towards the girl, ears back and tail wagging in greeting when he reached her. 

"I'm sorry - I'll grab him," Sasha offered, crossing the remaining distance to the girl, beckoning the shepherd back towards him.  The dog, however, appeared to have other ideas.  He'd flopped down in the grass and merely wagged his tail at Sasha's beckoning.  "I'm sorry.  I ..."  This was awkward. 

"I'm sorry."  Sasha's shoulders drooped as he offered the last, more general apology.  He had no bloody idea what he was doing.  Or what he was supposed to be doing.

Katy sat on a rock and bent forward to lie flat on her own thighs.  She propped her chin on her knees and dug  at the sandy soil beneath the rocky beach with a stick she'd found.  Her hand was moving but her mind was lost in itself.  Katy felt so stuck these days, trapped in the whirling of her own thoughts.  It was deafening but there were no words, both full and empty.  That's the way it had been ever since... her mother.  Tears stung at her eyes but she blinked them back stubbornly. 

All of a sudden there was a cold, wet nose in her face.  Katy sat up straight and stiff in surprise, staring at it in surprise and confusion.  She was dimly aware of a called apology but she didn't really process it until the dog flopped down at her feet and looked away.  Following the dog's gaze, she saw Sasha.  He kept apologizing and Katy didn't quite understand.  What was he apologizing for?  For the dog.  Hesitantly, still uncertain but willing to offer some sort of olive branch to the only person who had any idea what she was going through, she reached out and pet the dog's head.  She rubbed the ears and looked up at Sasha with a grim look that was marginally softer than it had been previously. 

"What's your dog's name?"  she asked.

Baldur, in his usual way, seemed perfectly content to be uncooperative.  Normally, the dog was very obedient but this wasn't the first time Baldur had shown a tendency towards intelligent disobedience.  The dog seemed to have developed a habit of showing an increased level of affection towards the counselor whenever Sasha was trying to avoid her the most. 

If he gave the dog a firm, curt command, he knew the dog would obey but doing so would make it obvious he was trying to evade from the Hufflepuff.  Sasha suspected the dog recognized the emotion or ... whatever ... of a situation where Sasha was unlikely to insist on a command. 

Dumb dog. 

Sasha watched as the girl reached towards the dog.  Baldur responded unabashedly, reaching his head out as far as he could to meet the girl's hand before flopping over on his side on top of the girl's feet.  So much for being a noble creature. 

It was starting to get to the point where hovering over the dog and the Hufflepuff was getting more and more uncomfortable.  But, when the girl asked for the dog's name, the dog rolled over onto his back, making it clear he had no intentions of moving anytime soon.  Sasha finally sat down with his bag in his lap.  "I ... his name's Baldur.  He's ... if he's bothering you, you can just shove him away.  He's probably just conspiring against me." 

Then, for good measure, he added: "I can leave, too, if you'd rather.  I'd understand."

Baldur had soft fur and he was warm against her ankles.  Katy definitely didn't mind.  He was one of the nicest animals she'd encountered in her life.  Most of them didn't like her, even her own owl.  But Baldur seemed content so Katy just kept pushing her fingers through the short fur on his belly when he rolled over for her.

"Better you than me," Katy said grimly in reference to the accusation of conspiracy.  "I have enough animals working against me.  But he's nice.  I like him."  Her voice trailed off into a soft, barely-there whisper and she just gazed at the dog because it was easier than looking at Sasha. 

"You can stay," she added.  There was a great deal of tension between the two of them, so much unspoken since Halloween.  It was strange but she actually felt a little better now that he was here.  Finally she glanced at him and confessed, "I was kicked off the Quidditch team."

Sasha flinched, slightly, when Bevans spoke of conspiracies and diverted his attention to retrieving the tin backpacking canteen from his bag.  "Animals working against you?" The comment caught Sasha off guard and he turned back towards the Hufflepuff.  He glanced between the girl and the dog, his gaze finally resting on the dog.  Like the girl, the dog was definitely the more comfortable target of the two. 

A small smile settled on the Ravenclaw's face when the Hufflepuff spoke of the dog.  Despite his complaining, it was hard to describe the boy's sense of attachment towards the animal.  "He's a good dog," Sasha confirmed before hoisting the tin, slightly.  "Do you mind?  I've still got two more classes this evening after dinnertime.  He's saved my life.  Twice," Sasha added, nodding again towards the dog.  "I couldn't imagine being without him." 

Sasha grimaced, closing his eyes and shaking his head at her confession.  "I'm sorry," he repeated, again.  "I shouldn't have let you get involved."  He knew the whole ritual had been a bad idea but there was still just a small kernel of him that regretted losing the opportunity for the conversation.  This, Bevans taking part of the fall was an unquestionable regret.  He'd gone into it knowing the consequences he might face.  "You have every right to hate me.  Or, at least think I'm a nutter."

Katy grimaced when he asked her further about the animals.  She just shrugged and murmured, "Animals really don't like me much."  She looked down at Baldur who was looking up at her as if to say, 'Why have you stopped petting me?'  "Except for Baldur, apparently."  She quietly resumed stroking his fur.

"I don't understand," Katy responded in confusion.  Her head tilted to the side as her demeanor faded from hurt contemplation to defensive anger.  "Let me get involved?  I would have been more angry with you if you hadn't let me get involved.  You of all people should know that sometimes there are things that you just have to do.  I don't hate you," she finished emphatically.

"How can they not..."  Sasha started to ask, before cutting himself off.  It was hard to contemplate animals not getting along with someone.  They'd been so much a part of his life ... part of his escape.  As tense and uncomfortable as his home life had been, he couldn't imagine what it would have been without the distraction of animals.  Baldur.  The horses.  Even tending the family's dairy herd.  Animals gave him an excuse to be away from the house.  For hours - even days during the show season. 

"He's pretty easy going," Sasha admitted.  "As long as he doesn't think you're a threat."

The Hufflepuff's outburst took Sasha by surprise and he looked at the girl, startled.  Slowly, he set his dinner to the side and shook his head.  She was right, of course.  He knew that all too well.  But, there were so many things he could have done in hindsight.  He could have kept the book better hidden so she didn't find out in the first place.  He could have denied he was still looking into it when she found him after learning of her mother's death. 

And, she was right.  It had been one of those things that they'd felt like the had to do.  And, yet - ", we didn't actually do it."  Sasha looked down and rubbed his face with his hand.  His voice faltered slightly when he spoke, again.  "Did any of it even help?"

Katy grew quiet as she thought about whether or not the whole thing helped.  That wasn't what Katy had meant when she said there were some things you had to do.  For good or ill, Katy had felt a driving, burning need to help Sasha with his plan.  At this point, the success of their actions was almost irrelevant.  Katy felt confused about the whole thing.  There was no failure really.  It had happened, they got in trouble, and now they just had to try moving on. 

"I don't know," Katy finally confessed.  "I think it happened.  Whether or not it helped..." Katy shrugged.  "I suppose it's up to us.  Weren't you going to eat that?" she asked with a glance to where the tin was set down.  She was grudgingly impressed with his foresight to bring food from the dining hall for dinner. 

"I was beginning to wonder if you were starving yourself," Katy murmured. She looked down at her hands resting curled together on her knees, uncomfortable with the feeling of actually caring how much someone ate.  The last person not her mother was her childhood friend, Bryn.

Sasha frowned and shook his head.  How could she say it happened?  Perhaps it was a bit of his perfectionist academic showing through, but they hadn't done it.  They hadn't succeeded!  The assignment had been left uncompleted.  And, try as he might, he couldn't give Bevans that.  "I ... no.  We didn't.  I failed.  And ... I don't even know what the next step is." 

That had been the worst part of the aftermath.  The grief was still there but the opportunity for closure was gone.  And, now, a total loss of direction.  For months, he'd at least had a goal. 

Sasha glanced down at the food and, reluctantly, picked it up.  He flipped it open, revealing what remained from what he'd gathered that morning.  That, along with an apple and a granola bar fished from his bag would comprise dinner.  Then, usually, he'd stop by the kitchens and beg something from the elves after classes finished later that evening.  The elves, by now, were used to it.  A salad typically stood waiting when he got there. 

"I don't really eat in the Great Hall anymore.  It's too crowded and hard to study."  There were only so many spilled pumpkin juices one could negotiate their essays around.  Taking the tin spork, Sasha took a bite of potato before turning back to the girl. 

"It hasn't.  Helped," Sasha finally confessed.  The failed necromancy attempt simply hadn't helped.  Whether it would have if they'd completed it would always remain a mystery.  "Some days it's worse.  Some days, I guess, it's better.  I don't know.  It's just made it all that much harder to ignore.  It was easier when I could focus on the plan.  Now, there's nothing." 

"I know what you mean," Katy whispered, suddenly feeling like she wanted to cry again. "She didn't know where to go or what to do.  She could only drift from class to class, do her homework, and eat her meals.  Interacting with people didn't even happen anymore.  She'd never been good at it but now it was impossible.  One minute she wanted to cry and the next she wanted to yell and scream and fight. 

"I feel like I'm coming apart at the seams," she confessed.  Looking down at her hands, Katy pushed her fingers against the pleats of her skirt.  It was an enormous confession for her. "It's like no one notices but at the same time... I'm not sure I want them to notice."

"It's smart of you not to go to the Great Hall.  It's hard to find a spot to sit alone without anyone bothering you."  She rubbed her arm and turned her face to the sun in the sky.  It was nice to be outside again with the sun shining.  It was so rare during the winter.

Sasha watched the girl as she confessed, his eyes following her fingers against her skirt.  There was something strangely familiar and relatable in the outward expression of frustration and pain.  Baldur, it seemed, had noticed the tension as well.  The dog pushed himself upright and crawled across the ground nudging at one of her hands with his nose.  Sasha took a deep breath and looked back out across the lawn, rubbing his face to clear his thoughts. 

"Was she all you had?"  Sasha took another bite of food before fetching the apple from his bag and offering it, wordlessly, to the Hufflepuff.  "You're mother.  I mean, is your father at home?  Siblings?"  Would she be going home to an empty house at the end of term?  There were few things worse, Sasha had come to realize, then walking into a once living family home and finding it empty.  Quiet.  Desolate.  Finding yourself in a strange home with a strange, surrogate family was, at best, a marginal improvement.  The emptiness was gone but it just intensified the feeling of displacement. 

Not to mention, becoming a charity case.  A burden on someone else's home.

"I feel like I'm coming apart at the seams.  It's like no one notices but at the same time... I'm not sure I want them to notice."

"I know what it's like."  He wasn't sure if he meant it as a gesture of understand.  Or, an offer.  "I ... Ava.  The girl from, you know.  They thought she was my sister.  She thought so, when she died.  There.  She ... my parents had died the month before.  And, my younger sister.  And, Edith.  They all blamed me.  And, no one gets it."

Sasha looked down at the tin plate in his hands and nodded, frowning slightly.  Between everything last year - from Skeeter's articles in the Prophet to Knight's Wanted Posters featuring Sasha to his broken wand, Sasha had abandoned eating in the Great Hall.  Half the time, now, he spent his meals in the Astronomy tower. 

The dog pushed it's nose under her hand, forcing her nervous fidgeting to stop.  It was in her fingers now though, and it felt good to be doing something, better than nothing.  So Katy ran her fingertips up Baldur's nose and rubbed firmly  between the eyes.  It was only a small connection but Katy was unfortunately used to that.

She stopped petting the dog and took the apple that Sasha offered her.  She didn't eat it, just held it in her hands.  "She was the only one I had.  I was an only child and my father..."  Katy trailed off with a deep, shuddering intake of breath as she tried to muster her control.  "My father might as well be dead," she finished, her voice a strange mixture of loss, resentment, and vengeance.

Pushing those thoughts aside, Katy's voice turned blank and matter-of-fact.  "I don't have anywhere to go now." 

Katy didn't really understand Sasha's broken sentences about the girl named Ava, although Sasha seemed to think she should.  However, she did understand the feelings behind it, the raw loss of it.  At least four people he described had died all at once.  Part of her wondered what that would do to a person but she figured it wasn't all that much different from losing  the only person you ever had in the first place.  Either way they were both alone. At least no one blamed Katy for her mother's death, which was obviously an accident.

Always good at reading people, Katy was spectacularly bad at knowing what to say to them.  Right now, there was very little she could think of that wouldn't sound callous or superficial.  The mere fact that she restrained herself from saying any of those things was actually quite remarkable for her.  Eventually she decided not to try and offer comfort or support and went with a question instead.  "Why did they blame you?"

Sasha nodded his head and looked forward.  Apparently, the similarities between them were numerous.  Sasha's father was ... complicated and depended on which version of the role one referred to.  He wasn't all that better off with his own birth father, though there certainly no desire or sense of vengeance.  And, he saw his birth father on a nearly daily basis.  The man he called his father was dead and Sasha felt little grief towards him.  The man who was willing to accept the role proudly and with no abandon ... well, the rest of the world was dead to that.  And, then there was Professor Trishna. 

"The Ministry will probably decide."  Sasha said, his attention turned back to his meal.  "If your mother didn't ... make arrangements.  Godparents or something of the sort.  That's what happened to me.  I was in foster until the Ministry could work through the muggle documents and legal stuff.  My parents had named trust appointees so they finally put me back with our groundskeeper."  Sasha glanced at the girl.  "Which is different, I know.  It's scary not knowing, though.  And, easier not to go home.  If you can avoid it."  Sasha shrugged.  "At least, home is harder for me." 

But, then, again.  It was different.  He'd seen his family die there.  He'd taken another man's life there.  Every time he walked out his bedroom door, he could remember the pool of blood and the lifeless bodies strewn across the house. 

She'd still have painful memories awaiting her at home.  It would just be different.  More sadness.  Less fear. 

Sasha blinked and looked down and flipped the metal container closed.  His fleeting appetite had left him and he doubted he could stomach much more.  He'd survive until he visited the kitchens later.  He could only guess or speculate the reasons for them blaming him.  The memories of that night were a knotted mass of chaos and screaming and flashes of green and he rarely lingered with them long enough to sort them out.  "I ... It's complicated."  Sasha hesitated a moment longer while watching the dog. 

"My sister...the man had already killed our parents.  And, our nanny.  The killing curse so, obviously, he was wizard.  Anna said this was because of me.  It ... he ... I assume it's because he was a wizard.  If it weren't for me he wouldn't have been there."  Sasha stared blankly, before shaking his head.  "If I'd done something.  If I'd killed him sooner.  I don't know.  They still don't know what he wanted."

 Katy didn't want to live with strangers. Foster parents would just be two more people, adults, who didn't understand her and didn't like her.  She'd rather be alone.  Fourteen yeas and ready to be alone.  It was easier than bearing the ignorance of other people.  The Ministry had no right to determine the course of her life like that but it was an internal dissatisfaction she would not voice aloud because she had no better alternatives to whatever the wizarding government decided.

"I haven't been home yet but there are only a few pictures and things that I really want.  Everything else I need is already here at school with me."  She purposefully avoided admitting that she was scared about her fate.  She was but she wasn't ready to think about it.

She honestly could believe that Sasha was telling her even this much.  He didn't know her but, perhaps that was why he was able to say anything at all.  She didn't know but she was incredibly nervous about ruining this with a ill-considered response.  She took a bite of the apple to buy herself a a minute to think about what she was going to say.   The meat of the apple crunched under her teeth.  She swallowed it heavily and finally spoke.  "I don't see how it could be your fault.  Unless,  of course, you asked him to come knowing he'd hurt your family."

Sasha nodded, though not with total understanding.  There was little about his physical home and the possessions within that he would miss but he wasn't sure he could have just left it behind.  Perhaps, again, those were those minor differences between them.  Perhaps it was all still too fresh and raw for her.  A lot had changed since those initial first days and even weeks. 

"You'll probably want to go back.  At some point.  Even if just ... to leave again."  Maybe it was part of the closure.  "Leave.  Shut the door behind you.  I avoided going back for months after but, it just made me edgy, actively avoiding some place I was once tied to.  Even if it's just to make peace with it." 

Sasha shook his head and drew his wand ... the wand he'd won that evening and looked at it.  It wasn't until the Tournament wand weighing that Sasha had learned of the wand's characteristics.  It was a Gregorovitch wand.  Manticore core.  He knew the details but still knew nothing of the history.  "I didn't even know who he was.  Never seen him before.  They say he used to be a Death Eater and had been in Azkaban.  Maybe it had been muggle baiting.  Mudblood and all that - especially since my parents disapproved of magic.  I suspect, that's why they blamed me."