Terrible Angels (OPEN)

After Potions on Friday, Maryn had managed to lag behind her sister enough to sneak off into an unused dungeon. She cared deeply about her sister, but sometimes she just couldn't stand being around her and this seemed to be the perfect place to hide out aside from the Slytherin Common Room or her dorm, but they seemed far too busy. Vic hated being inside, especially in the dungeons where there were no windows to the outside world or for the sunlight to shine through, so she only ventured down there when she had to for classes. Maryn lay her self out on a built-in bench and thought she might just take a nap.

Aside from the odd ghost floating through, she hadn't yet seen anyone else in this particular dungeon and had started to feel quite at home there. Just as she was thinking about the ghosts, one appeared out of a stone wall and lazily waved at her. He was a regular. Maryn rolled her eyes and then covered them with her arm so that she wouldn't be expected to be polite to dead people.

It was the scent on the air that made Katherine deviate from her path to the common room, someone was in one of the dungeons close by and the darkness seemed to beckon to her. As Katherine walked toward this darkness and into it her eyes immediately focused and she looked down at her hands. Her skin appeared to shimmer, she hadn't fed in several days but it wasn't really that much of an issue. She could go almost two weeks now without feeding, it would cost her at the end of the two weeks, she'd be nothing more than a ravenous monster but it hadn't been that long, all that was affected now was her skin that looked even paler for the lack of blood.

She followed the scent to the very door where she could smell the presence inside, the whole place teemed with her scent. Katherine opened the door, slipped into the dungeon and closed the door behind her to watch as a ghost slid silently away through the opposite wall with a lazy look of contempt toward the corner. A small girl lay on a bench in the corner with her arm over her eyes and Kat moved slightly over to get a better view. She knew from the scent of her that she didn't know this girl but it was curious that she was alone in the dungeons, Katherine had thought that method of escape had been abandoned since most of the ghosts loved it down here.

"So do you enjoy the darkness or is it the silence that draws you?" She asked while leaning back against the wall and sliding her hands behind her back to press against the cold stone there.

((I'll apologize now for the horrible writing of the French accident. I need to get back into it. finding it a bit difficult.))

Maryn hadn't heard the door open and close, nor did she hear any footsteps so she assumed that the speaker was another ghost. She sighed and uncovered her eyes preparing a snide remark. For a moment, Maryn thought that Katherine was a ghost, but she wasn't quite transparent enough. After squinting at her for a moment until her eyes adjusted to being uncovered again, she realized otherwise. However, she didn't recall having seen her around, but that wasn't all that surprising. Maryn tending to keep her head down between classes and her eyes didn't wander during them. When she was with her sister she tried to be as invisible as possible. Not making eye contact with anyone make her feel as if she weren't seen.

"Euh...bodz," she said with her heavy French accent as she looked the girl over, "Deedn't 'ear you come een..."

Katherine raised an eyebrow at the French accent and wondered what had happened to make this girl attend Hogwarts, what had happened to Beaubaton School. "I didn't want to frighten you." Katherine said in quick explanation of her silent entry. "What's your name?" The room they stood in was cool and though it had no effect on Katherine, being what she was, it was hard to imagine it was comfortable for the girl.

((Sorry, it's short.))

((No worries.))

Maryn sniffed and smirked, "So, you decide to sneak?" She stood and studied the girl further before saying, "Maryn 'Olzinger, you are?"

Raising her chin a little Katherine couldn't help but acknowledge the little edge to the expression on Maryn's face. 'Well, I am rather good at it, don't you think?" She didn't much care for the way she was being studied but smiled quietly, her usual small smile when the girl told her name. "Maryn... I knew someone named Maryn once, I was in Ireland at the time." Her reminiscing seemed out of place and Kat realized she'd forgotten herself. It was happening more and more often, too many years being out of civilized conversation had made her drop her guard.

Maryn had to nod in agreement at the fact that the girl was remarkably good at it. “Eet eesn’t a common name, not dzat I know ov. ‘Ave you traveled a lot…” Maryn was about to tack on the girl’s name, but realized that she hadn’t been told it. She couldn’t help but wonder if that was on purpose even though she didn’t see a reason for it. “euuhhh…deedn’t catch your name…” The mysterious girl before her was becoming more and more interesting to Maryn. She almost hoped that the girl wouldn’t reveal much about herself. The mysteriousness that she seemed to be slathered in was very appealing to Maryn.

It was only after her strange pause that Katherine realized she’d forgotten to introduce herself, she shrugged mentally and pinned it down to all the years she’d lived without once ever speaking her own name. It was all so unnecessary really, for as old Shakespeare had asked so rightly, what’s in a name?

“Call me Katherine – “ She paused to let her name settle and then continued. “I’ve travelled some, what made you come to Hogwarts? Did Beaubatons close down?” She couldn’t help to ask, the motivation was two pronged – getting the conversation off herself and some weird curiosity about the fate of the French school of magic.

Maryn made a mental note of the girls name, which seemed extremely fitting somehow. For someone who had traveled some, it surprised Maryn that Katherine did not know of what happened to Beaubatons. She thought that everyone knew about all of the schools of higher learning being attacked and destroyed. Maryn then thought that, perhaps, other parts of the world just didn’t talk about it as much as the French. Stories of the old schools and what happened to them were some of the first stories that she remembered being told.

“You could say dzat…" Maryn said. "Beaubatons was destroyed not long before ‘Ogwarts. Zees school was zee last I zink. I ‘ave ‘eard zere are small schools ‘ere and zere around zee world. Most learn at ‘ome I zink. Zat ees what my mozer told me…she deed not want my seester and I to come.”

Katherine raised her eyebrows quickly and then her expression went blank again. So it was destroyed. She'd stayed sufficiently out of touch after her disappearance to have missed most things... the only reason she knew of Hogwarts being attacked was because she had actually cared - strangely enough. Kat wasn't too sure what to say in response to what Maryn had said, it was, in a way, a very personal statement but she found herself thinking back to her own family and how things had been, how much she'd hated her father... "So all the old schools were destroyed then?"

Maryn caught a slight change of expression, perhaps surprise; however, it vanished as quickly as it appeared. She had actually doubted that she saw it, but what Katherine said next made erased her doubts. Maryn nodded silently.

"Ze eemportant ones around zee world. I zought everyone knew zat…are you from ‘ere?” Maryn finally said as she studied the other student even more closely. She had heard that some witches and wizards had founded secret communities around the world and they had become very much cut off from the rest of the world. She supposed that this girl might have come from one of those, but she didn’t know how she would have known about Hogwarts in the first place.

Katherine smiled. "I used to be. But I've been traveling, didn't have a lot of connection until now." She pushed away from the wall and walked to the opposite wall, running her fingers along the slight indentations in the wall when she got there. She was fascinated by all the little cracks and dents in the castle. It was almost like the whole place held a new fascination for her that she hadn't expected and she wondered if anyone else really took the time to notice these little things. "You come from a pure blood family?"