Hogwarts School - Castle

It was obvious that Katherine didn't want to be alone. She was proud of the way she carried herself after that awful night—but her composure was as fragile as a castle of glass.

So when she approached Lorelei Kensington to ask if she wanted to hang out, it was understood that neither of them was willing to discuss the elephant in the room—or the complicated sentimental webs they had both entangled themselves in.

She had taken Lorelei’s hand and practically dragged her outside so they could spend the afternoon basking in the sunlight—very, very far away from the thoughts that tormented them when they were alone.

After all, if there was one thing she could thank Caius for, it was Lorelei’s friendship.

At first, she had reached out to make amends—to prove to him that she was serious about her promise. But instead, she had found a friend. Someone she could talk to. Someone who understood her better than anyone else at that castle because they shared an uncanny amount of struggles.

Sitting barefoot on the grass, sunglasses perched on top of her head, Katherine had been telling Lorelei all about a dress she had ordered for the summer when an idea struck her.

"Can I braid your hair? I always wanted to—it's so pretty."

She had already decided she was not about to mope around after what had happened at that bonfire. Not only because she believed in saving face like it was the eleventh commandment, but because she was sure of what she had told Caius on that rooftop.

Kate had finally started acknowledging that she had so much to offer to those who were actually willing to see it, and it was helping her cope more than any self-destructive behaviour she was used to displaying.

The pain was still there, of course. She had lost a friend, and she had lost the first boy she had ever really loved—not in a way that felt like teenage idealization, but in a way that was genuine, deep. She knew it was not going anywhere anytime soon.

But, strangely enough, the whole situation had started to make her feel lighter. Maybe it was knowing she had rid herself of someone who was never really her friend. Maybe it was finally speaking up for herself for something more than maintaining her façade of control. Maybe it was the fact that she no longer felt the need to prove she was someone worth keeping around.

The point was that—despite the creeping sadness that lingered in her heart—she was starting to believe her own words about being a great friend. And she was damn sure she wanted to live up to them.

"Rosie," she had said to her friend after they had both had lunch at the Ravenclaw table, "wanna go for a swim? You can bring Cass—promise I'll play nice. I mean, if you're really sure enough about him to make him your boyfriend, then I can try and be his friend."

She had kept her distance from that boy mostly because of Eira—because he had hurt her, and she had wanted to make her feel like at least someone was on her side. Not because there was anything she particularly disliked about Cassian. And even if it wasn’t about hurting North—she still cared about her, even though she was fairly certain she never wanted to speak to her again—Kate knew it was time to prioritize the happiness of the friend who actually cared about hers.

And that meant—among a hundred things she thought she was already doing—befriending the infamous Cassian McCormick.

Right after this

The moment she knew she was out of sight from the people at the bonfire, Kate started to run like her life depended on it.

Not even the curfew mattered anymore—she didn’t know how much longer she could hold back her tears. And she was sure as hell not crying in front of anyone.

She finally reached the rooftops, and only then did she allow herself to break down.

Her hand clutched at her neck as she felt her throat tighten—that nasty, familiar feeling that always came when her emotions were too much to handle.

Kate walked towards the cornice, hoping the fresh air would help her regain some sense of reality and calm her down.

Completely lost in her own thoughts, she didn’t even notice the two girls who had been smoking there and were now watching her.

A few months ago, Katherine Dankworth would've preferred to sever her own hand before skipping a class. She was probably one of the most devoted students in the entire castle—the kind who would've snitched on others if they had the bad luck of being caught by her playing hooky.

That Kate would have never gotten along with Niamh Doherty, they were just too different. But so much had happened, that she almost felt like a completely diferent person. The kind of person who skipped class, smoked on breaks, and barely even spoke to the people she loved the most.

Slowly but steadily, she had shutted down until a point she couldn't quite pin point the last meaningful conversation she had had with any of them.

Eira and Rosie both reminded her of the gala catastrophe—though, in fairness, Kate knew they weren’t to blame and wasn’t mad at either of them.

Ephraim seemed to be almost always around Nael, and Kate knew it would take her at least a few weeks before she could look that boy in the eye without blushing or feeling like she wanted to cry—he wasn’t a safe bet.

And then there was Caius—the one she avoided the most. She knew she could never be cold or mean to him, especially knowing what he was going through. It was a thin line to walk, being there whenever he needed her while keeping her distance so he wouldn’t see right through her—so she just made a point of never being in the same room as him. Kate just assumed her absence would go unnoticed—a hurtful idea, but certainly for the best.

That was her plan that morning. Skipping Potions so she wouldn't have to see him sitting a few tables behind. A good excuse to give Winchester would come up later, she thought.

"Doherty," she said, sitting beside her with a mischievous grin. She leaned in, whispering in her ear, "Let’s skip—we could take a smoke on the rooftops. You in?"

It couldn't take long for Rosalie Laurence to leave the common room and head towards the Great Hall. Or so Kate guessed. If the girl had other plans, she didn't know—and she didn't care. She had done something that very much called for an emergency meeting with the person that knew the most about the matter.

"Rosie!" As soon as she saw her, Kate grabbed her by the arm and practically dragged her into an empty classroom.

She looked restless, pacing among the empty desks as she tried to make some sense of what she had done.

"I kissed Nael." She blurted out, finally, stopping on her tracks and looking at Rosie straight in the eye. "And then I told him I liked him."

In her mind, the first sin was pretty forgivable. Kate was aware of her reputation—she had flirted with more boys than she could count. And she did it for many reasons, none of them being that it actually mattered to her. Not so long ago, she had kissed a boy in front of her whole class just to make another boy mad. For her, kisses were just something you could give, not a declaration. It wasn't a big deal.

The second one, on the other hand, was a disaster. Not only she hated to talk about her feelings—she had also promised herself she would never ever confess to a boy again. It didn't go well the first time she did it, and since then she had learn her lesson. Or so she thought. But mostly, it felt mostly like giving up the upper hand for no good reason.

"Do you think is too late to alledge temporary insanity?"

The face looking back at her in the mirror was unrecognizable. Kate couldn't even tell if it was really her.

Her dark gaze sparkled with something that she had never seen—something that scared her. She was so pale, too. Only hint of color was the purple under her eyes—one that revealed she hadn't slept in days.

She reached to touch her own face on the crystal. Not even how cold it was to the touch managed to snap her back to reality.

William Dankworth's words still flooded her mind. Half-breed. Monster. Just like your mother.

Maenad.

What did that even mean? She had read about those creatures—scarcely. Roamers of the night. Enchantresses. Dark creatures. Nothing good. How could she be all that? She was a witch. A pureblood. A Dankworth. Was it all a lie?

She always knew she couldn't ask about her mother. She figured she had done something to get on William's bad side, a side Katherine knew too well. But she never thought her father actually associate himself with a creature. Let alone have a kid with her.

A kid. His heir. His only heir.

The heir he now needed to marry off before anyone else knew what she was. A monster.

It did explain many things.

Katherine had written to her father because she didn't know what was wrong with her. Always such a composed child. Why was suddenly so angry? Where did the outbursts come from?

Her mind felt like it was slipping away.

All the boys, and the fights. How troubled she had been.

It had an explanation.

She was a monster.

Katherine looked at her reflection one more time.

Then she took the first thing her thing her hand could reach and threw it at the mirror, breaking it in a thousand pieces.

Whoever was looking back at her, Kate couldn't recognize. The only thing she knew was that she didn't want to look at it anymore.

Kate had seen Parker McCormick more than once since she first arrived to Hogwarts. Still, until then there hadn't been a single reason for her to speak to him, and she was surprised that fact changed one day in Charms class, when Amberghast put them together for an assignment.

The only information she had about the boy was that he was Wyatt's brother, and that he was always in some kind of trouble. Last thing she could remember about him was trying to control herself to not burst into laughing when Al-Azma had hexed him for being late. And while it was very funny when it wasn't her problem, she wasn't laughing that much now that one of her grades relied on someone she considered a troublemaker.

Kate, as always, had already judged the book by it's cover and didn't even bother asking Wyatt about his own big brother. So when she approached him in the hallway, she didn't even know Parker had, actually, a pretty decent grade sheet, and her mood was not precisely the best.

Still, she put on a fixed smile, unsure of if her approach of bullying her classmates into studying would actually work on someone who was already on seventh year and didn't seem really worried about, like, anything.

Parker McCormick definitely seemed too chill for Katherine to actually like him. Right?

"Hey." She said, taking him by the arm. If something could be really said about Katherine was that she conducted herself with confidence. Being shy felt for losers. "Parker, right? I don't think I've properly introduced myself. I'm Katherine, but you can call me Kate. Anyways, we should start working on that assignment. Are you free now?"

The first thing Katherine thought when she saw the mentorship assignments was that she must have pissed off someone really bad. The more she tried to get rid of Ren Al-Sayeed, the more tied she was to the boy. From the same classes, to being paired to monitor the halls, every single activity she chose to do around the castle, she had to do it with him.

Maybe someone had cursed her. Or maybe —and this was very difficult to say, coming from a person who didn’t really believe in sheer luck—, it was all just one big joke from the universe.

But whatever it was, she was stuck once again with Ren, and she didn’t dare to complain to Julia for the pairing, considering she already felt on thin ice with her as she was the person who caught her roaming the hallways without permission.

What she was supposed to teach him, she didn’t know. She felt like Ren always thought that she knew more than her, as he always demonstrated by being the only person faster than her to answer every professor's questions in class. Katherine had to disagree with that statement, though. The only people she really recognized to be smarter than her were her teachers, and maybe Cordelia given the situation. She for sure wasn’t about to give any merit to someone who was younger than her, even if he had given her reasons to do so.

“Meet me outside the library at five pm. And you better be on time, I don’t like waiting.” That was the only thing she said to Ren that morning, when she caught him leaving the common room to eat breakfast.

Maybe if she was done fast with it, it wouldn’t be as annoying.

Term had barely started and Katherine already felt like she was going completely insane. The amount of activities she signed up was straight up madness, and pulling it off had already cost her many, many, nights of sleep. Her under eyes were baggy, her uniform seemed messy, her hair was up in a bun that seemed in its last moments, about to crumble at the slightest touch.

She felt like a mess, too. The few nights she had managed to gather some sleep, awful, weird nightmares would wake her up violently, stealing from her any chance of true rest. There had to be a solution, she said to herself. She was volunteering in the Healing Wing after all, it didn’t seem crazy to her that Tala would know how to brew some potion that would help her have a peaceful sleep, at least for one precious night.
So she dragged herself towards Tala’s office, trying to gather her thoughts before seeing the woman that was going to be her boss for the rest of the term. She didn’t want to take the pity route, that was clear. She would simply tell Tala that she had found an awful lot of students who couldn’t quite conceal their sleep, and she had investigated a potion that they could distribute around the kids. That seemed like a solid plan.

She knocked a few times, hoping the Head Nurse wasn’t too busy to see her. The sleep deprivation was making her so irritable and sick that she feared that she would explode at a teacher at any given moment. And when Tala opened, she started with her little story about altruism, sounding incredibly confident about it even when her looks revealed that the only person who needed to sleep without dreams was herself.

It was early in the morning, the first Sunday of the term, and you could notice fall approaching more and more because of the eerie fog that covered the gardens. Not a good hour to be up on a weekend, but Katherine had managed to convince Wyatt to accompany her to the quidditch pitch at seven o’clock. Normally, she'd train alone, but this time she needed someone who played as a keeper, and he was her last resort, as he was the only person who would’ve accepted helping her so early on a sunday.

So there she was waiting, and hoping he hadn't fallen  again the minute he tried to leave the bed, leaving her stranded. Her hands felt cold and she was trying her best to maintain her corporal temperature, pacing in circles and rubbing her hands. On one hand, she had the box that contained the quaffle, and on the other, she had her broom. Her father had agreed on giving Katherine a top of the line one, after she gave him a long discourse about the benefits of her winning on the pitch. She had the suspicion that he only agreed to shut her up, but it didn’t really matter. As long as she got her way, the little details didn’t really matter.

Only thing she knew for sure was that there wasn’t anyone else around the gardens to bother her. It seemed like a terribly quiet morning, as everyone was really tired from the rush of the first week. She was too, her purple under eyes showing she hadn’t got enough sleep since she arrived, but it was a sacrifice that had to be done in order to be the best there was.

Maybe, if she played well enough, she’d manage to impress the Head of Slytherin, whom she knew was a big Quidditch fan, and even owned a team. She already planned to send him a related gift for his birthday, as she was on a mission to get him to like her. And, maybe, that would guarantee her the spot of prefect next year. She hoped. His father had been Head Boy of Slytherin in his time, and she knew it was expected for her to achieve everything William achieved, if not more. She didn’t dare to think much of the consequences of failure.

But mostly, she wanted to take her mind out of things. A lot had happened during the week, and she couldn’t help but feel terribly embarrassed every time she walked to the Slytherin table. So she guessed the cold air in her face, and extenuating workout, would make her feel like herself again. This person, who barely held it together and had to make efforts to look as confident as always, wasn’t pleasant at all. When Wyatt arrived, it might be easy to notice for him that there was something wrong with Katherine, but she hoped, giving the early hours, that he was too asleep to do so.