The Unveiling of Purpose
Katherine clutched the soft cotton sheets thrown out beside her. She refused to open her eyes. The world could throw away all hope and goodness on account of my depression, and I would not care. How could I after all I've been through?
It was just too early.
Her first day in a new place and it just seemed like someone had shoved her straight into a picture or slideshow. As far as she could tell, her outlook on the next year and its possibilities was as dark as the inside of her eyelids
Hogwarts, she knew, was a prestigious school with a wonderful academic life and some of the best professors the magical realm had ever seen. She had just assumed she could expect an excited group of students ready to learn and communicate their ideas. It was too bad she did.
Not a person had spoken to her yesterday except an apology from a little girl who had run into her while trying to stop a boy from tickling her. Her first instinct had been to snap 'brat' at the girl and yank her straight off of the ground by the arm. Instead, Kathe stood silent, brewing while staring at the spilled contents of her new leather trunk. Mud was everywhere; rain ruined her silk robes and dresses. A large, monstrous looking man walked by with a lantern and stepped squarely onto Katherine's shampoo bottle which squirted soapy foam all over her shoes. And while several smaller children snorted and giggled, Kathe remained stone-silent. She never even had to say her name until the headmaster himself inquired after she stood alone in a corner of the entrance hall for nearly twenty minutes.
Normally watching people would be one of the most calming things in the world to her, but never had she become so completely enveloped in stress, she'd sweated like a chubby kid waiting for his mother to finish baking and cooling the chocolate chip cookies. She frowned. She didn't mean that, she really didn't mean anything by that, and she couldn't stand how bad she felt for thinking it at all. The Great Hall was everything she had expected it to be: inviting, warm, and imaginative. Katherine wanted to take thousands of pictures of the ceiling, for its weather changed from second to second and one hardly saw the slight shadows of the vaulted rafters just beyond the clouds. Once she looked back to the floor, however, Kathe realized how far from fitting-in she really was.
She felt sticky and disgusting now. She wanted a shower, badly. If she only knew where it was…
She had no house mates to help her or tell her where to find it. It seemed that the thin, lanky, and down right creepy character of Merlin, what is that man's name? Mr. Flinch? No, that isn't it. Maybe just Mr. Finch, though I feel for any creature they let him handle, but that still… wasn't it. Oh hell, it doesn't matter. He had been practicing his basic magic on the Sorting hat when it disappeared and wasn't found in time for even an after-dinner sorting.
Katherine rolled over. She could see the sunlight through her eyelids. It was obviously a beautiful, sweltering summer day. One of the first years bunked beside her coughed.
Erin lifted her head off the pillow. "You ok," she asked, opening her eyes to thin dark slits, "You need some water?"
"That's ok," the little girl curled up beside Katherine replied. "I'm fine." Her voice was small and kind of nervous. She reminded Kathe of a mouse, or a pathetic rat, but that was still mean. Katherine forced herself to turn over on the lumpy bed. Is it so hard to give a girl a decent place to sleep after traveling so far? But you're being picky again. You've been camping more times than you can count!
"Go on back to sleep then, you'll need more energy then you think for your first day."
"Yes, ma'am," the girl replied quietly.
"I'm Erin, short for Erinaka Moss. You don't have to call me ma'am, just your professors, who are girls, of course."
Kathe indiscreetly pummeled the pillow to her ears. She couldn't say for sure if there had ever been a time in her life where she had been so irritated.
The girl laughed a little. "I'm Lily. I was named after the mother of the Boy-Who-Lived."
"That's nice," Erin added, opening her eyes to let a decent amount of light start to awaken her. "Now, go back to sleep."
The girl didn't say anymore. Katherine rolled over onto her back to stare up at the gold lit ceiling. It was useless; she was wide awake, and she had to pee. After a minute or so, she flipped herself over the edge of the bed to gaze out the long glassed window. Lily had fallen asleep again, her back facing Kathe's bunk. Erin was watching the young girl sleep and smiled at Katherine when she rose out of bed. She mouthed a good-morning to Kathe who stretched high into the air and breathed deeply as she did every morning. The air is different around here, she noted to herself, but she couldn't quite explain how. She rolled her head around at every angle to her neck and heard two or three cracks as she did so. She bent backwards and forwards and to both sides.
She was awake now. The thought of the day became: don't give them anymore of a reason to hate America. Kathe disliked children and wasn't entirely sure she could handle ever being a mentor to one of these… young people. Over the years, Kathe's family had concluded that she couldn't handle children because she was never around anyone younger than herself. Her cousins were approaching forty, her brothers were thirty and twenty-seven, and her only sister was twenty-six and captain of a local Quidditch team. Immaturity was nowhere to be found in her bloodline.
She heard Erin let out a sigh from across the room. Kathe fumed. England, or wherever exactly Kathe was, was so unlike yet like home. The people were not anymore frustrating than at home, but everything anyone did made her blood boil. That still didn't mean things were bound to get better. She'd been known to always take the bitter side of any argument, but she remained the only one to consistently win at anything.
Katherine looked over at Lily again. The kid was cute. She smiled and Lily tousled in her light sleep. Erin had pulled the covers straight over her head and turned onto her stomach. Her breath roused the corner of the sheet by her head. No one else is the room made a noise.
I better get out of here so I don't wake anybody up.
Katherine always thought it better not to make people upset or confused, especially not in their waking hours.
Tiptoeing quickly across the frozen stone of the floor, Katherine exited the room to end in a hall, un-windowed and adorned with torches. Her eyes nearly refused to adjust to the light.
Kathe blindly stumbled down the hall, her eyes bugging on her face to absorb all the light she could. She thought she heard footsteps behind her and turn to say hello and ask them anything they would know, but the wall stopped her, or rather, it gripped her nose and painted it bright red with a side of throbbing head pain.
Good morning to you too, Hogwarts, she thought sarcastically. What a year it's going to be!
"Is somebody there?"
Katherine coughed to clear out her nose, and as soon as she re-inflated her breathing tubes, she answered the voice.
"I'm here." She coughed again. "Where are you? I can't really see; it's too dark." The dust that had gotten in Lily's nose now coated Kathe's lungs. Why would they house us in such a horrible, unkempt part of the castle? Where are the windows? A soft voice in the back of her mind whispered 'where is home?' and went quiet.
"Lumos," the voice whispered, and a sphere of light sourced itself across the hall from where Katherine stood.
The glow revealed a girl, a brown haired, brown-eyed, tall and older, and Hogwarts student girl! She must have been about Katherine's age, but Kathe still interpreted her as a pathetic mouse.
The girls examined each other with the same look of shock and interest. The student took in the sight of Katherine's bed tangled locks to the blotchy pink of her nose to the plain white tank top and pajama pants she wore. Katherine took in the site of an immaculately clean-cut Hogwarts uniform and had to stifle a laugh. Unfortunately, it was how she would have looked with a shower and her trunk, except for she still didn't know what house she was in. The student was from Gryffindor from what colors on the small badge Katherine could see.
There was a long pause. Katherine snapped to attention after figuring that she had no clue who this woman was and was prancing around in front of possibly-important people in her skivvies.
"Katherine Wilson, exchange student from America." Kathe rushed her introduction, crossing one arm to cover her chest as if she were cold and extending a hand towards the student. "This will be my sixth year while I am here at Hogwarts. And you are?"
"Hermione Granger, Gryffindor prefect." Her accent was thick and snubbed with arrogance. Immediately, Kathe felt heat climb her neck and prickle her hair, but Granger continued without a faint change in her air. "This is my sixth year at Hogwarts as well. Why are you up here?" The girl questioned Katherine like she was lying or a spy. Suspicion was uncalled for. Kathe remembered painfully that she had to use the restroom.
"I'm up," Katherine remarked. "Well, I was really just trying to find someone to tell me where a bathroom and shower are. Actually, maybe knowing where anything is would do the trick."
"I can help you." Means 'I know everything,' Kathe thought mockingly. "What did you say your name was?" Means 'I couldn't care less who you are,' or 'can you tell all my professors I did this for you.' "Prefects are warned to be cautious and aware of others," 'I think you're the devil incarnate,' "so I'm sorry I acted sort of rudely." And that means 'I'm enjoying you suffering and am in no way, shape, or form, sorry!'
Hermione started walking briskly in the opposite direction Katherine had been stumbling in. Katherine followed at her normal pace, still keeping at Hermione's side. This girl had self-esteem problems, it was obvious. Hermione was like a skewered pig on a spit, rod-straight and bubbling at the edges. Kathe was taller by a few inches, but she was no giant. Her guide soon stopped by a large statue, but Katherine never saw exactly what it was because the Gryffindor already whispered the password and sped into the opening.
"This," Hermione started, "is the prefect's bathroom, 'you're not worthy of this honor,' but I assume it's no bother if you use it just for today, 'don't disease anything,' until you're sorted and what-not, 'until you leave'." She pointed to a brown wicker basket in the corner of the room. "Fresh towels are in the bin over there. Showers," she said, pointing to the left, "the bath, and the sinks. I think I'll go on down to breakfast. She you later, 'not'" and she left Katherine in the cold marble plated room.
She may not be the most delightful of sorts, she thought, but I suppose I just met my first friend here. Kathe snorted at her own joke. Where were all the interesting people, the handsome British guys? When was she going to find one thing she liked about this place?
WHERE was the toilet!
Katherine shuffled over the cold marble floor to examine the corners of the room. The one to the far left sported the door to the 'Lou,' and Kathe prompt opened it. This was not part of the Prefect's bathroom and was obviously enchanted to connect one way to the nicer, bathing-room. Afraid of loosing her chance to take a hot shower, she propped open the heavy wooden door and ran to use the toilet. While washing her hands, Kathe was startled by a loud, sobbing wail from one of the other stalls. Startled, she'd nearly slipped on the stone floor and cracked her head against the sink, but she caught herself on her knees.
A shrill, prudishly girly ghost jetting in front of Katherine, and for a fleeting moment, Kathe was utterly petrified. Then the ghost looked wickedly at the floating, propped door to the left of the sinks. She smiled back at Kathe. "Stay out of my bathroom," the dead girl gargled in her throat.
"I'm Katherine, Katherine Wilson." She rose slowly, keeping eye contact with the deceased. "I was just washing my hands."
"I don't care," more gargling mingled with bubbly sobs, "what you were doing!"
Kathe started up the water again, or at least she tried. When she spun the knob, no flow was released, and she bent to examine the problem. Kathe realized she'd moved one sink over from the one she was using before. Is this place really so poor as to have bad beds, dark halls, and broken plumbing all at the same time? She examined the pipes closer, seeing a small carving. The ghost screamed and fled to the back of the row of stalls. A snake, the carving was a snake.
"You can't go down there!" The ghost sobbed loudly, "you'll die if you do."
Katherine stared interested at the figure then turned away, glanced down the room, and walked to the floating door. Before she closed off the Prefect's bathroom, she said goodbye to the ghost and smiled in anticipation. I know what to do with this find. I know exactly what to do…
Switching on the water in the last and farthest shower, Katherine relaxed and let the steam rise and warm her every cell. Her thoughts wandered over the possibilities after she opened up that sink. She'd find a way easily enough, and there was no better way to gain respect than to defeat a fearful thing. Katherine Wilson would find a way to make herself known before her year was up.