Five in the evening.

The weather had been pleasant all day. Clear skies and a mild breeze-- it would be nightfall in a few hours however and Raine knew that meant a very cold evening by the time she found herself in bed. But for now it was warm, even up in the Astronomy Tower. The Gryffindor climbed steadily up the stairs with a small satchel slung across her chest-- she had dropped by the common room to change out of her robes because they were too warm. In her summer sweater and jeans, it almost felt like she could be home.

Almost. The fact remained, she was heading up the tower see Professor Trishna about her Astronomy OWLs. Not that she was going to take it up next year; she didn't really know why she cared so much. Perhaps because Sanya cared-- it seemed important to achieve a good grade, for her. Seemed like the least she could do, now that their star-gazing traditions were as absent as Sanya herself.

"Raine, wait up!"

Raine didn't even pause in her ascent, though her face turned a ghastly pale. There was nobody else on the stairway and she knew it just as well as she knew her sister's voice, calling from inside her head-- not from behind. She swallowed. "Raine! Come back here! I have the telescope!"  It sounded so real, though Raine kept on, pushing herself forward each step with listless, perfunctory grace. Looking back would be giving in to the hallucination. Not far now...

"You forgot your charts! RAINE!"

Sanya's voice was so loud and clear that she couldn't help herself this time-- the young witch turned around quickly, like a startled cat.The  stairwell curved smoothly downwards. It was lit by the evening sunlight coming in from the tower windows and not a single soul was there. Its emptiness was almost painful and Raine Almasy stood staring at the space with vacant blue eyes, feeling both disturbed as well as thoughtful. She wasn't supposed to get these illusions here at Hogwarts. Dreams, yes, but not this. Unless she was dreaming now? No, not possible. Didn't feel anything like her dreams. She bit her lower lip nervously and turned back up.

Struck with the fear that the illusion would repeat itself, Raine began running up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. Her shoes sounded loud and hard against the stone but it didn't matter; the sooner she was around company, the safer she would feel. She was moving so briskly that she nearly tripped at the landing by the office, and had to stop for a moment to catch her breath.

It took a couple of minutes to compose herself before she knocked at Professor Trishna's door: three solid knocks first. Then, cautiously, she pushed the heavy door open: "Excuse me? Professor?"

The office, after a few moment's pause, was clearly empty. There might have been the quiet shuffle of a pile of paperwork falling over on the other side, but no accompanying cursing or cry of frustration as one might expect.

There was, however, noise from the classroom above - footsteps and a voice raised in the kind of gentle scolding one gives to children and pets. The footsteps came down the stairs, but when the lower door opened, it was by a large and fluffy long-haired grey cat.

The cat stopped on the flagstone landing and eyed Raine with a kind of belligerent laziness - as if it'd like to sum her up but really didn't care enough to do so. This cat clearly had standards by which it set the universe, and no one in the castle today had measured up.

"Besides, you're the one who insists on sleeping on the damn thing." Tapendra came out the door, glaring at the cat and apparently not seeing Raine. He was also halfway through dressing into his proper waistcoat, and was trying to find his way through tying his tie while scolding his cat. He wasn't being very successful. "So don't get so uppity when I kick you - oh..."

He'd tied his tie into a knot and noticed Raine in the same instant; in his embarrassment, he'd also pulled the silk tight. "Miss Almasy," he said, trying to get his neck loose without looking like he'd thoroughly mucked it up. "Can I help you with -" He stopped, noting the messed up nature of her clothing, her breathing... "Is something the matter?"

Raine Almasy jumped backwards a step when she heard Professor Trishna enter the office, telling off the rather condescending feline that had greeted her just a moment ago: "Besides... you're the one who insists on sleeping on the damn thing." He went on reprimanding the cat and Raine stood still, eyes opened wide, uncharacteristically-- her heart was still racing from her episode on the stairwell and her breathing was uneven.

"..when I kick you- oh..." The Professor looked at Raine and she noticed now that he was trying to adjust his tie but had jerked it up too tightly. She resisted the trivial, offhand compulsion to reach over and adjust it; the idea felt displaced and manic. Trishna struggled with the damned thing, speaking: "Miss Almasy. Can I help you with-"

Raine stared back at the Astronomy teacher when he broke off the sentence; her face was a sickly shade of white. "Is something the matter?" He asked, seeing perhaps the panic she was trying to keep a cap on.

The Gryffindor shook her head mechanically and then cleared her throat: "S-sorry to disturb you professor," she forced the words out in a rush and felt colour returning to her cheeks: "I, ah... I came to ask for help. With some notes. They're here in my bag." Raine moved awkwardly to open her satchel without waiting for a reply, but stopped abruptly when she glanced down at her hands-- the outline of the strap was imprinted on her palm. She hadn't realized how tightly she'd been gripping onto it.

"Oh..." She trailed off in a quiet voice and raised her troubled gaze to Professor Trishna. He seemed so normal right now. Solid and real and not at all grim, like everything that was running through her head. The professors always seemed like they had it all together. Raine swallowed nervously and then, less rushed than before, said something that bypassed her thinking process altogether: "Do you think that hallucinations are a sign of insanity, Professor?"

Well, something was  definitely up; Almasy wasn't acting like herself, that was for sure. Still - he got his tie untied finally and was pulling it off his neck to start again when she started to reach for her bag and hesitated. Her face was white, her voice strained.

"Do you think that hallucinations are a sign of insanity, Professor?"

Well. That wasn't what he'd expected; he'd been rather optimistically expecting a pre-exam stress meltdown. He raised an eyebrow, leaving his dark blue tie looped around his neck and letting his hands fall to his sides.

"Well," he said softly, thinking. Then he cupped his left elbow with his right hand, his left raised and fingers curled in the air as he considered this. Next to his bare feet, Kepler yawned widely and began to wash himself.

"Well, strictly speaking -" He started again, "Not really, no. They're usually triggered by a chemical or a disease..." He trailed off, aware that likely wasn't exactly the answer she was looking for, and looking a tad sheepish. "Are you having hallucinations, Almasy?" he asked.

Raine didn't know what manner of answer she was looking for. It almost didn't matter what Professor Trishna was saying because she was barely listening-- between her OWLs revision and the recurring dreams, she had completely ignored the apparitions. It took less energy to ignore such occurrences than it did to deliberate on them.

"Are you having hallucinations, Almasy?"

That, she heard. It wasn't a question she wanted to answer; nobody had really approached the subject since the funeral and she didn't want anyone to know. They would think she was weak. Only, lately, it seemed alright to be weak. At least if you knew what your weaknesses were. She dropped her stare to the floor, at the professor's cat. He looked content (for a cat).

"I think so." Raine stood awkwardly, crossing her hands across her abdomen in a defensive posture.  "Well, yes. Typically at home. My...um. My sister. After she died, I hallucinated a lot." She glanced up at Professor Trishna, self-conscious but trying not to waver. Now that  she had said as much, she couldn't exactly run off without a word.

Her gaze dropped, irritably, on the Astronomy teacher's undone neck tie-- as close to eye contact as she could go at this moment. "I had one today." And then, quickly and apologetically: "Sorry professor, I didn't mean to, ah, bother you about this. I was just very surprised."

Raine wanted to say very scared but that was a stretch, even with her present burst of articulation.

There was something ironic about him watching someone else divulge information that made them jittery and upset, and the small, buried part of his brain responsible for making fun on himself was in no way hesitant to point this out. He tried to ignore it; the biggest issue was what she was saying.

"I see," he said, carefully. Almasy...had there been something in the paper? He couldn't honestly recall. That might be a good thing, since it give him no outside view on her issue, but it could be a bad thing for the same reason.

It could also have been rather insensitive. But he was pretty sure it hadn't been recent. So he hadn't been reading the Prophet as much as he was now that he was back in the wizarding world...

He offered her a warm and reassuring smile. "It's no bother," he said, reaching over and patting her shoulder.  "Do you want to talk about it?" He asked, gently. "I won't press you, if not. But it can help." Blowing off steam, if nothing else - but if it was the death of a close family member...he knew how hard that was to talk about. How numb that shock could make you feel.

"I won't press you, if not. But it can help."

Raine tensed her jaw when Professor Trishna patter her shoulder and glared up at him, expression openly distrustful though only because she couldn't quite hide it. His kindness was irksome. But she didn't say anything because, in a way, he reminded her of Sanya. Not normal in a natural manner but normal in spite of the way the world was, in spite of  difficulties. It was hard to be annoyed at someone like that. Her expression softened a little and she cleared her throat: "She was in Ravenclaw, you know."

Trishna was head of that house. It was strange how detached she had becomes from the Ravenclaws after Sanya died, now that their link was gone. "We were only twins by appearance. You would have liked her, Professor." Raine met her teacher's gaze with a vacant, unreadable expression: "Sanya was the perfect Ravenclaw and she was always so terribly exuberant." 

Hesitantly, Raine paused-- she shouldn't be talking about Sunny. It didn't feel right, describing her sister to someone who had never seen them together. She took a step back, nearly bumping  into a table, and shook her head: "I can't. She's dead now yet it feels like she's still around. In my hallucinations..." The Gryffindor still looked face-forward at Professor Trishna, but she appeared to be staringat something within. Trying to force an admission out.

"In my hallucinations and my dreams, she asks me to join her. It would be easy, wouldn't it?" Finally, she focused her eyes on what was infront of her and without warning,  smiled. An unpleasant, sardonic smile: "All I have to do is die, she says."

He visibly hesitated, shrinking back as she glared at him. But she subsided, and he straightened his back and listened.

Tapendra did twinge when she said she'd been in Ravenclaw. He hadn't looked back at the records - or, rather, he'd only looked at the records of individual students. Georgiana hadn't mentioned a classmate dying, and since it hadn't happened on school grounds...it wasn't much of an excuse, really.

He's opened his mouth to start speaking when she spoke of dying. His jaw shut with an audible clack. Well. That was...unexpected. And extremely alarming. At least she hadn't come up here with the intention of throwing herself off the stairwell or over the parapet. He hoped, anyway. It was still...worrying was an understatement.

Guilt, he thought. That would make the most sense as a trigger for such a desire..."Do you want to?" The questions came almost unbidden. "Or do you feel like you should want to?"

The moment those words left her lips, Raine knew she shouldn't have uttered them. It was more than morbid-- that was the sort of conversation you only held with yourself (or as it was, the occasional hallucinatory entity). She felt a familiar clenching pain at the bottom of her heart, thinking that this was something Sanya would have laughed at. Her blurting out melodramatic things.

But in spite of his initial surprise, Professor Trishna didn't respond the way Raine thought he would. She expected him to tell her to stop thinking unhealthy thoughts, perhaps something similar. "Do you want to?" He asked instead and the Gryffindor bit her lower lip anxiously. "Or do you feel like you should want to?"

Both. Neither. Answers quickly flashed through her mind in various compositions. She felt really small all of a sudden, and really short compared to the teacher. Her voice sounded small when she spoke: "I want to, sometime, because I think I can see her again."

Her eyes felt feverish and Raine withstood the instinct to look down at her shoes. "Then I tell myself that she'd hate me for it. It's as if... I can feel her waiting. And I'm afraid she'll disappear if I take too long."

Raine blinked up at Professor Trishna with an unsure expression: "Am I making any sense?"

"Am I making any sense?"

"Yes," he said, simply. He'd known that feeling all too well, after Judy died. But it had been him who would hate himself for abandoning his kids; Judy likely would have been fine with it. In the end, he'd chosen the living over the dead, made the girls his anchor to the world, and remained confident that Judy awaited.

Would she still want to see him now? After all he had thought of and done? That was an issue entirely separate from Almasy's, and for a fleeting moment hen envied her for it. She didn't have to worry about cheating on her sister.

Shifting his weight to his left foot, he looked down and met her eyes, his words this time chosen carefully. "She'll always be there," he said. "Waiting," he added, voice distant for a moment, his eyes mirroring her expression - looking through her for a moment.

Twins wasn't a bond he knew; technically, siblings wasn't either, despite having a sister. Georgiana was closer to a daughter - the fact he'd raised her, and had been older than Raine was when she was born, had ruined any chance of their relationship being anything but parental in nature. Still, loosing a twin had to be indescribable; even if you didn't get on, they'd been there literally your entire life.

"Sit down, Almasy." It wasn't an order, but was certainly a firmly spoken piece of advice. There was a white couch across from his desk; he picked up a few binders and manila folders to make room for her.

"What was she like?" he asked, tone measured and gentle.

For a moment, Raine wasn't sure who Professor Trishna was talking to. He spoke very seriously and with a gravity that she somehow could not attach to her own situation. Under different circumstances, she would objected to what was said-- it felt too personal a reassurance. Except, really, what had she anticipated? You couldn't open yourself up like that without expecting a personal response.

"Sit down, Almasy." Trishna moved to move aside some supplies from the couch opposite his desk and she suddenly realized how heavy her legs felt after that sprint up the tower.

Raine waited until he was done before she sat down, back straight and ankles crossed demurely. She felt a little better; more relaxed when she was sitting. Her hands fell onto her lap and she interlocked her fingers. The office wasn't very neat but it appeared relatively serene right now.

She looked back up at Professor Trishna as he addressed her again: "What was she like?"

Quietly, Raine regarded him with a meditative gaze. There was nothing mean about the wizard, nothing mocking or unnaturally sympathetic. He seemed interested, if anything. A lot of people may have known Sanya but Raine felt like she was divulging a secret whenever she described her sister.

"Persistently happy," she told him in a soft, unusually sanguine tone: "Sanya was determined to be cheerful, and so every day was a fight to find something to be happy about. She smelled like peaches. When she laughed, she blushed. When we got lost, we held hands. Her ankles were weak but she could dance all night if she wanted." Raine met her teacher's gaze steadily. It had never occurred to her before-- and perhaps it was her own mood she saw reflected, but Professor Trishna looked a little sad.

Tenaciously, Sanya Almasy's memories went on clambering about in her head like a bad song: "We snuck into papa's study once to drink whiskey and smoke his cigars. She hated both but we wanted to stay up all night and fell asleep together by the windowsill instead. We caught a cold, so I..." Finally, something in Raine's head told her to shut up and she heard her voice crack a little when she trailed off. There was a flood of things she could have told him about Sanya, only there was no filter and she could only turn off the tap.

Raine exhaled heavily but she half-smiled with the knowledge that a part of her was somewhere else, remembering better times. She briefly glanced away to collect herself and then leaned back in her seat, arms falling to her side in a much more relaxed posture: "Sorry. My sister was resilient but very sweet and it made me want to protect her all the time."

He listened as she spoke, picking up the self-heating kettle from its spot on the small side-table next to the couch. The onrush of OWL hasn't been kind to his office, and he had to carefully hold the paperwork down so it didn't fall as he unearthed the kettle.

Her account certainly made him disappointed he hadn't been here last year; cheerful Ravenclaws were seemingly few and far between, and the majority of them were so bloody serious now. And while the account was certainly a bit embellished - though, given Almasy's personality as he knew it, likely not by much - Sanya's death had almost certainly robbed more people than Raine. It was easy to picture the two girls together, though; the serious one and the persistently cheerful one, always crusading to get Raine to loosen up...

Setting the kettle on the side of the desk and filling it with water from his wand, he started it heating and leaned on the heavy oak desk, long legs crossed at the ankle. When Raine trailed off and looked at him again, he smiled gently.

"I'm sorry, Almasy. She sounds like a wonderful girl." The hint of sadness was back, for a fleeting moment. "I wish I could have met her." That was certainly completely true; Tapendra would be the first to admit that he had a major weakness for enthusiastic children. Especially persistently cheerful ones.

"Do you mind if I ask what happened?" He asked, carefully. "You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to..."

Raine's heart leapt a little, with pride, when Professor Trishna said he would have liked to have met Sanya but she could only frown at his following question, confused: "You don't know?" she asked incredulously. Then her brow cleared in realization: "You don't know."

She felt a bit like a fool now-- why of course, why would he have made it his business to know? The papers had published, at best, vague reports, and only a handful of students understood what had really happened. Most assumed an accident. Merlin knew what the teachers were told but if Trishna didn't know, it was no wonder he didn't mind asking. Nobody who did had ever tried extracting the story from her.

"I ... ah, I don't mind telling." Raine leaned forward pensively, shoulders slightly hunched and arms crossed again across her abdomen. She was determined on being concise because the details were difficult, too difficult too put into solid words. "My sister was murdered by the relative of our closest friend. It was out of the blue and I saw it myself but I couldn't get there in time to help."

That sounded right. There needn't be mention of the weather that afternoon, the look on Sanya's face, the way she crumpled up like a paper puppet and dropped into the brook. Raine was abruptly aware of the fact that she had been staring right through Professor Trishna, and quickly focused her intense eyes to meet his gentler gaze: "If I had known that parting with her that morning meant never seeing Sanya again, I would have never let go of her hand."

Again the stab of guilt - and it only grew when she told him what had happened. How had he not heard of that? Murders were relatively rare in the wizarding world; they almost always made the front page...but he hadn't been reading the Prophet as much as he had recently, and so he must have missed it. It wasn't an excuse, though, was it?

But that guilt was secondary to the shock - and, odd to him, the stab of anger. She hadn't told him the exact details of course, but even so...you didn't kill children. In Tapendra's mind there was a special kind of hell for those sorts of people and he had no problem that he often had the urge to send them there himself, when it came to it...

"I see," he said, suddenly aware he'd been standing there looking rather openly enraged, his hands forming into fists at his sides. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, removing his glasses to do so. "Why would someone...?" He mused out loud, softly - almost under his breath. "I'm so sorry, Almasy," he said, at a more normal volume, but still with that odd edge to his voice. Ignan probably would have told him not to be such a girl, but the thought of it both made him want to punch something and want to cry. Maybe he'd been born with an overactive emotion gland.

There were a lot of things he could ask, wanted to know - was it instant? Was she aware of the danger? But he settled for the simple, "Did they get her killer?"

Raine glanced up at Professor Trishna, surprised and almost amused. She had never seen him look quite as angry as this and there was some comfort in knowing that he wasn't angry at her. Adults had that reaction to Sanya's death, though-- anger. Her parents, the governess, even the aurors who came at the end. The correspondents from the Prophet had been outraged as well and it was all that the family could do, telling them to repress the reports.

Trishna suddenly  apologized, although she wasn't sure for what, and muttered something inaudible to himself as he took off his spectacles. He looked less studious without them. Less like a professor and more like a person, which made him seem approachable. "I'm so sorry, Almasy," he told her in a tone that made Raine wonder if she had been right to speak with him about this. "Did they get her killer?"

Raine paused for a moment. She brought her legs up onto the couch and crossed them, still observing the professor with a plainly appraising expression. Her breathing had calmed now--she was still upset but less lachrymose.  The astronomy teacher was taking this well. Her Governess had taken out a bottle of sleeping tonic long before she'd explained this point of the incident. "We did, actually." It hurt a bit to mention the name that followed: "Roger and I were there. He tackled his uncle, I disarmed him." 

Raine looked down at the cat by Professor Trishna's feet and held out a hand, casually beckoning it as she continued to speak: "We bound him and I.... I went to tend to her body. He's in Azkaban now." The feline seemed unimpressed by her attempt and she gave it an equally wry look before glimpsing up at its owner.

"I know this sounds strange but I'm not mad at him. Right now, I'm content with being sad. Perhaps that will grow into anger someday..." Raine sighed heavily, suddenly glad that she did push herself into speaking with the professor. There was a cathartic feeling to describing something she had been trying to repress for months.