Amara had desperate need of chocolate, anything—anything to keep her mind off of it. She was seconds away from using her family connections to procure industrial amounts of Elixir to Induce Euphoria. She craved to feel alive—Circe, feeling anything would be enough. Amara was rapidly losing herself, and she was starting to realize there was nothing that could be done about it. She was plagued by these incredible urges to provoke pain and sow discord left and and right, her reality was getting so twisted and dark it sent shivers down her spine, and the few moments of lucidity she had left, were always haunted by the memory of Emi. Had her aunt Elena passed through this as well? Had all her ancestors helplessly watched themselves grow into cold, vicious monsters? Was this the true power of the terrible Báthory curse?

Chocolate. For now, chocolate was the answer. So she had made her way determined to get some out of the kitchen elves. She had barely entered the kitchen corridor when she noticed a familiar figure a few meters away. A distraction from her over-thinking mind! M-something. What was her name? She quickened her pace to catch up with her. Her memory compartmentalization was very out of sorts since the incident. She cursed under her breath as she was almost a meter away from her and she still couldn't remember her name. Just as she was extending her arm to pat her on her shoulder she blabbered it out, as if struck by lightning.

"M-Moira!" she raised an eyebrow at her own almost compulsive vocalization of her name, but quickly settled her features into a smile. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shout" she excused herself. "I was afraid I'd lose you, your common room is rumored to be around here somewhere" she looked around, not sure herself whether it was true or not. It certainly didn't look like it, but neither did the entrance to their common room. "How have you been? I haven't seen you outside of class and I've been meaning to ask how our strange little furry friend is fairing?" she asked curiously, ending with a small smile. Some deeper part of herself wanted to lash out at the girl, blame her for things she had no fault in—damned, even the Slytherin in her wanted to belittle her for being a Hufflepuff, for caring, for feeling. But she held tightly to the few strands left of her sanity... and humanity.

Moira wandered away from the common room entrance to go for a walk and get away from the others. While Moira was getting better with being around people considering how she was when she started, she still preferred being alone. That idea was momentarily short-lived though when she heard a familiar voice call her name.

Turning to face the slytherin she blinked at her rather odd behavior, at least odd compared to last time. "Um... I've been alright I suppose, wasn't ready to come back to Hogwarts, though. And our furry friend? Oh, the Niffler. He's great. Da' agreed to keep him after he found Da's lost watch. Decided he might be handy to keep after all."

"Oh did he?" she asked almost amused and before she could contain it she left a small giggle— yes, giggle escape her lips and she stopped in her tracks, took a hand to her mouth and froze eyes big and worried. But before soon, she chuckled again and relaxed. It was okay, normal girls did that, didn't they?

"Is he adapting well? I don't know much about them, as I've said before?" she asked with a smile. "I am curious how they fare as pets... I think the kitchen, with all the silverware, would be clearly in danger from the little thing" she added musingly. Apparently, mindless chitchat - which she actually hated with a passion - was one of the few things that kept her mind off of her nightmares.

The fourth year Slytherin was definitely acting strangely. Still, she didn't see any harm in talking to her - especially about the Niffler she had helped her catch. It wasn't like Moira was in any kind of a hurry anyway.

"Da' kind of fixed him his own personal treasure trove, plenty to keep him occupied and away from anything he doesn't need to be messing with." She paused, "he doesn't have a name yet though..." Moira and her family couldn't keep calling the Niffler him and it, forever and eventually she'd have to think of one. Her Da' and Uncle weren't about to name the critter.

"What about Caspar?" she suddenly blurted out. She stopped for a second to frown and wonder just what the hell was going on with her. "It means 'treasurer' in Parsi. It seems... adequate enough" she added a small smile and absentmindedly took to twisting one long strand of silver hair between her fingers.

She squinted her eyes for a second and analyzed the girl in more detail. "Are you well? You seem—somehow changed from the last time we saw each other" which was a rather ludicrous thing to say, given that she herself was nothing like she had been that strange morning when they bumped into each other. "I don't mean to pry" she added a reassuring smile "There's just something that seems off about you" and she hadn't realized how wrong it had sounded and how something inside her stirred and seemed to leap with joy at recognizing a sort of pain inside the other girl.

Caspar. Moira thought over the name a few times and decided she liked how it sounded. "I like it. The name does seem to suit." She would have to send a letter to her Da', telling him of Caspar's new calling. If he tried calling Caspar anything else, he wasn't that great at names for animals, she would have to make him suffer.

Hearing the Slytherin comment on her well being, however, caused her to freeze up. A month and a half later Moira thought she had managed to shake off the evident lingering guilt and hurt. Inwardly she doubted it would ever go away, but the fact that someone else noticed it had Moira distancing herself like she did in classrooms, crowds, and basically anywhere that wasn't home or alone with animals. "I've never been better."

She took a few steps back to lean on the wall, arms crossed over her chest and. "I'd almost believe that" Amara says while carefully watching the girl with squinted eyes. "If not for the fact that you are most certainly lying" she then said devoid of any sort of feeling. "Interesting" she commented after that.

"Why is that, Moira?" she asked, now dead-set on finding out what it was that had this girl changed in only a few months. Not that she was one to talk... She supposed Moira could've as well passed through a life-changing experience. But she wanted to know why? And what it was. "I wouldn't have pegged you for a liar, Miss McBoid" she said with a smirk. For whatever reason, she was actually enjoying poking sticks and needles at her.

Moira stayed where she was, watching the other fourth year girl lean against the wall. "Whether ye believe me or not is yer business." Obviously she couldn't control such things, but this chance encounter was turning out rather odd.

"How people choose ta see me is no concern of mine, either." Amara's sudden interest was a wee disconcerting, though. Then there was also the way she seemed ta switch on feelings from one sentence ta the next. At one point curious but uncaring and another slightly malicious. If being questioned as ta why she seemed different didn't put her back up a bit, that did - not that she felt threatened it was merely a... precaution.

She stood there for a few moments, watching the girl with squinted eyes and a frown on her face. There was definitely something changed about her, she seemed... harder. She always did seem a bit broken, not as badly as herself but broken nonetheless. She slumped on the wall and threw her head back, resting it on the wall, looking at the ceiling. She listened to the shuffling of someone hurrying somewhere further on the corridor, until it was gone and sighed, eyes still transfixed on the ceiling.

"My sister's dead" she said softly, not really paying attention, not really wanting to say it, not knowing why she'd said it at all. She thought she might've heard a whimper, and she knew deep down that it had been her, that she had made the sound, but she merely closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. "She was 12 and beautiful and died alone on the second day of Christmas. I buried her on New Year's" she said voice cracking before she lowered her head to look at Moira, anger and sadness mingled in her eyes. "What did you do this winter break" she asked, daring her to come with a better reason for her sudden change, daring her to feel pity.

So that was the reason. What a terrible shame for one so young to die, much less to die alone. Moira didn't have any siblings, and she never would so the loss of a family member who shared the same parents could only be imagined by the young witch. With Amara's question she heard the dare in her voice. Moira took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Christmas? Ah spent it with me Da' and Uncle of course. If ye want ta know why Ah seem changed ye'll have to go back  ta when Ah was five. There was an accident that killed me mathair. An accident that Ah was the cause of. The past couple months... Ah've had ta come to terms with it. People still tell me it was-nae me fault... but Ah know it was."

Moira didn't look for pity. She didn't look to outdo the Slytherin's loss. Both losses were a terrible thing. One was old, one was recent. They both suffered.

"Well, look at us" she said said, ripping her eyes from the ceiling to stare directly at the girl. She made a sound with her mouth closed, curling the corner of her mouth in a sad, pathetic smile. "Both orphaned of a mother at a young age" she mused tapping her fingers on her other arm. "I was to be four in three days, when mine was brutally murdered" she said almost conversationally, staring at a blank spot in the stone wall behind Moira. She never added 'by a savage, abhorrent creature that should be exterminated as a species'. Her views on werewolves would best remain hidden for the time being...

"They say it wasn't your fault, but you blame yourself, my father silently blames me and my recently deceased sister for it, yet we had absolutely nothing to do it. How strange life is..." she said pensively before shaking her head and returning back in the now. "What happened?" she asked, not curious of the exact happenings, but curious as to how a five year old girl could cause the death of anybody, worse yet, her own mother.

"Tis strange, isn't it? Two people with such things in common can turn out so different and have such different experiences because of them." Moira nodded in agreement about the strangeness of life, not taking her gaze from the other girl who seemed much colder and darker in nature than herself.

"Ah did-nae tell me mother where Ah was going, or ask if Ah could. Ah spooked one of the new winged horses even though Ah had approached it correctly. He struck me once, then she paid the price for me mistake."

"Very different, indeed" she hummed, slowly nodding in acknowledgement. Moira was merely a sad, anti-social little girl, maybe she posed danger to herself, but what did Amara care about that... As a matter of fact, she was growing rather bored of the girl. Apparently nonsensical chit-chat only distracted her so much from the horrors in her mind.

The girl kept talking, but Amara wasn't really paying attention anymore. She was wondering, instead, how come she had only one little scar from being pushed around by a full grown winged horse. How come she was so little touched by that tragedy? And how Emilia had been so flawed, at her older sisters' hands nonetheless? And she remembered the charred skin on half of her face, and the empty socket Emi never wanted to fill, because she saw no purpose to a piece of glass inside her skull. What if Moira's scar was a little closer to the center of her face? Would she have lost an eye as well?

"You're contradicting yourself. You said you approached it correctly, yet refer to your mother's demise as her paying for your mistake. You were a child, children that small do not have the intellectual capabilities of differentiating clearly between what is wrong and what is not. You can't possibly hold yourself responsible for something you had no actual power over" she said still caught in the whirlwind of her own madness, talking almost automatically.

"Accidents, are just that - accidental. Blaming yourself for your mother's death is ridiculous. You had no moral responsibility to your mother, if anything she was the one who should've kept a closer eye on you" she said coldly, looking unimpressed at Moira.

"By blaming yourself, you'll get trapped into a self-image of victimization" she said steadily, never breaking the eye contact. "The psychological profile of victimization includes a pervasive sense of helplessness, passivity, loss of control, pessimism, negative thinking, strong feelings of guilt, shame, remorse, self-blame and depression. Did you know that, Moira?" she said glacially with a sneer. She was disgusted by this girl, and her pitiful guilt trip. Amara never had the luxury of entertaining such weaknesses and silly notions. She never had the time to take the blame for anything, she had to stay strong for Emi, but now Emi was gone and she couldn't even muster the emotions needed to blame herself fully. "Do you recognize yourself in that profile? Hmmm?" she asked arching an eyebrow, as she uncrossed her arms and took a step closer to the Hufflepuff.

"You know... thinking that way can lead to hopelessness and despair. You wouldn't want to burden the rest of your family, the ones that are still alive and matter, by becoming a psychotic, neurotic mess, would you?" she smiled sweetly, with her big blue eyes, almost innocently. She clasped her hands behind her back and retreated, still smiling dangerously walking backwards. "Think of that, will you?" she said still smiling, before turning around and continuing on the corridor.

"Lovely chat, Moira" she said louder, walking away as she raised a hand in the air, and waved it once.