[Alchemy] мне нужна удача (Conrad)

Zhenya dreaded Alchemy. Whenever it was on her timetable for the day the girl felt nervous, even anxious. She just didn't get the class. No matter how hard she tried, each and every lesson seemed to just underline that she was hopeless. It didn't matter if it was a theoretical or practical lesson either. Whenever the girl sat in the Alchemy classroom she felt like she was entirely brainless. She could not remember ever having given a correct answer to Galina Viktorovna's questions and it was a success when she did not blow up her potion but she had never managed to brew anything of decent quality.

Today's lesson was no exception. In fact, it was one of the worse lessons. Galina Viktorovna had told them what to do, had even written an explanation, a recipe, on the blackboard but somehow Zhenya had put the doxy eggs in before Valerian root and that had resulted in her potion to explode and so she had spent the last minutes of the lesson, looking at the mess, knowing that she could not hand in a sample of her potion.

The only thing that kept her from welling up right here and right now was the fact that she'd soon take her broom out for a training session. Only a few more minutes left and she'd leave the classroom behind and get to do something she was better at.

As the lesson ended she jumped to her feet, eager to get out of the Alchemy room when Galina Viktorovna asked her to stay. The girl stared at the professor in disbelief. She could not do that. She just couldn't! Flying was the only thing that mattered to her and now she had to do what? Clean up the mess? And as if that wasn't already bad enough she was going to do this without magic? That would clearly take way more time than she could possibly spare. Galina Viktorovna asked for her wand and provided some cleaning tools in exchange. To make things even worse, Conrad, whom she had avoided for the past three weeks, was joining her, because he, too, hadn't followed the instructions and blown up his potion.

She just tried to reason with Galina Viktorovna when the other witch already made her way towards the door, telling them to come to her office to get their wands back when everything was clean again. She was almost out in the corridor when she turned around to point at the ceiling, reminding them that they'd need to clean that as well.

“Great,” Zhenya muttered under her breath, rolling her eyes as she watched the door falling shut behind their professor. Now she was stuck with a task she didn't want to do, losing time she couldn't spare and had to deal with Conrad on top of it. Truth be told, Zhenya had missed her friend's company after having avoided him for a while but she didn't want to admit that to herself. Conrad hadn't tried to understand her, hadn't been comforting when she had needed him, she clearly allowed to be mad at him… However, she feared that he had every right to be mad at her as well.

“I guess there's no way around this,” the girl said bitterly, offering Conrad a sad smile. “It's silly that we have to do this when the house elves would probably even enjoy tidying up… We'll better get started right away, though. Then we can at least get out of here quickly.”

@Conrad Sturm

This hadn’t even been a proper explosion -- it’d just bubbled over and then congealed onto everything it’d touched -- but Conrad knew he was about to spend his free period mopping up half-dried turquoise foam, so he spent the last twenty minutes of class with his head down on the desk, feeling sorry for himself. He didn’t remember the last Alchemic mistake he hadn’t been made to clean up himself. He rather appreciated that Galina Viktorovna liked her punishments to fit their crimes -- his father treated every problem in the same harsh manner, and some of the other professors were rather similar -- but he was getting well sick of clearing up his own messes. What else were house-elves for?

There was a rustling around him of his classmates packing up their things; he raised his head and found the professor in front of his desk; he handed over his wand and accepted his cleaning supplies, too sour to offer any thanks. She’d kindly included a scraping knife he could use to cut his finger off by accident and a rag to mop up the blood; he sat up properly and gave the foam a prod with his finger; it was still disgusting to touch. He watched Galina Viktorovna warily as she crossed the room toward Zhenya, his face starting to burn with frustration -- not only was he trapped here without a wand like a child, but he was trapped here without a wand like a child with Zhenya.

He said, in a temper, just as the door was starting to shut, “The ceiling?!” but it went ignored; he wrenched himself to his feet and made his way over to Zhenya, who was grousing that house elves would probably enjoy this.

“I was just thinking that,” he said, “They’d do it faster, too.”

It did them no good to complain, though; Conrad had never let that stop him before, but he was angry with Zhenya. Or Zhenya was angry at him, he wasn’t entirely sure. He hadn’t gotten over her yelling at him and, clearly, she hadn’t gotten over whatever it was he’d said to her that’d made her angry: she hadn’t spoken to him in weeks and he was almost positive that he wasn’t just imagining it.

She said that they had better get started quickly; he nodded curtly, whipped his rag in a lazy little circuit midair. “You’ve got to clean the ceiling,” he said. She could balance on a broomstick on one leg; Conrad needed to hold his hands out to his sides to descend a staircase at a rate any faster than an amble. Between the two of them, she was the most capable of standing on a desk to clean.

“Do you think there's a possibility to summon the house elves so they do the job?” Zhenya wondered, frowning slightly. “It's almost like Galina Viktorovna is punishing them as well...” Well, she knew that was probably not the case but still. Why should they clean if the house elves even enjoyed doing it?

Although she tried to act as though nothing had happened, Zhenya felt tense. Conrad was one of her best friends, it had been a struggle to avoid him for this long even if she had really been disappointed with how he had handled their last conversation. She had clearly missed the evenings in his company. Admittedly the girl had been busy with training, with homework and had written several letters to her distant cousin, trying to find out more about the poisoning and how both Aglaya and Nastya were doing. It was not like the junior artistic flyer had been sitting somewhere all alone, waiting for company.

Being stuck in the Alchemy classroom with Conrad for as long as it took to clean their mess was not exactly a prospect that Zhenya enjoyed anyway – particularly not because it cut off some of her training time.

Conrad stated that she had to clean the ceiling and Zhenya narrowed her eyes, thinking that he was in no position to give commands. However, she figured that it was stupid to discuss it as it would just cost them more valuable time. “Right,” she, therefore, said, sounding only slightly annoyed.

She quickly mounted a desk and looked at the ceiling. “Well, if I stand on tiptoe I might reach the ceiling,” she muttered, bowed down to grab a rag from the desk and began to wipe the ceiling over where her own cauldron had been. “Not sure that went off well” she said, tilting her head to the side. “It's still visible, is it not?”

She jumped down from the desk and looked around. While clearly her place was the dirtiest one, the entire classroom did not look particularly clean after this lesson. From previous experience with Galina Viktorovna Zhenya could tell that she'd expect nothing less than a sparkly clean room. 'Goodbye training,' the junior artistic flyer thought, her face clearly reflecting how displeased she was. “Great,” she mumbled more to herself than to Conrad, “now I won't just be behind on school work but also on training. This sucks.” She knelt down to clean the floor around her desk so she wouldn't have to look at Conrad when her eyes filled with tears of sheer frustration.

Conrad had never considered summoning a house elf to clean for him; he mulled the idea over, chewing with great concentration on his lower lip, before saying, with great certainty, “We’d get into trouble.”

There was a pause; Conrad glanced at Zhenya for as long as it took to convince himself she was still angry with him. There was a tightness in her face; a tension. More importantly, she didn’t seem sorry, so he glanced politely back at the mess around her cauldron, at the ceiling above it. It was appalling. They’d take a while. He was tempted to abandon her to her failed potion and go attend to his, but -- unfortunately -- they’d probably have an easier time working together.

He hated alchemy so much.

It took about two seconds to realise the flaw in his suggestion: Zhenya might have had better balance than him -- by a long shot -- but he was taller than her. She climbed onto the desk but could barely reach it -- Conrad blew his breath out in resignation and clambered up as well. It was, indeed, still visible, so he went over it vigorously with his own rag, one arm stretched to his side to help him keep his footing. She hopped off the desk and he followed suit; the landing jolted a little painfully through his legs and ankles; he busied himself for a moment wincing awkwardly and contemplating how, if he’d put the bubotuber pus in after the knarl quills, he could have already retired to the Drakonya Krov common room for the free period.

She didn’t seem to be addressing him, specifically, so he was happy at first not to reply at all: instead he tilted spilt potion off of her textbook back into the cauldron. If he tried to tell her that it was only for an afternoon, that it wouldn’t matter that much in the long run, he figured she would take his head off.

Her voice was strained, though; as he was scrubbing splatter off the desk next to hers, he remembered that she probably had more on her mind than training. He waited a moment to let her collect herself before he asked tentatively, “Have you had any news about your cousin?”

“Yeah,” Zhenya sighed bitterly. They'd get into trouble summoning house elves to do what they were supposed to do themselves. However, the temptation was there even if the girl knew that they couldn't do it without getting themselves into a much more trouble than they were in now.

Conrad was taller than Zhenya was and she was glad that he realised that it was easier for him to clean the ceiling than for her – never mind her skills on a broom. She was missing an inch or so to comfortably reach the ceiling to rub the remainders of her potion off.

Once Conrad was done with it, she offered him a slight smile, it wasn't particularly genuine, but she had at least tried and thought that he should be happy with it. She wasn't going to thank him anyway. They were in this together so it was as much his task as hers.

She was surprised to hear Conrad wince as he hopped off the table, thinking that this really wasn't a dangerous stunt at all. Then again he was not an athlete, unlike her, of course. She was an artistic flyer and if the world had been fair, she'd be outside practising on her broom now. She closed her eyes for a split second, trying to calm down. It wouldn't help either of them if she snapped at Conrad and let out all her frustration on him.

Zhenya just wanted to suggest that she could try a healing charm on his ankle when she realised that Galina Viktorovna had deprived them of this possibility by taking away their wands. “You okay?” she asked, her voice slightly concerned at least. She did not want her friend (even if he wasn't quite her friend right now) in pain.

The girl went on cleaning, eager to get this all done quickly but at the same time lacking motivation to deal with the task. She could see that she hadn't cleaned thoroughly yet and she knew that Galina Viktorovna wouldn't let them get away with a roughly cleaned room when it could as well be sparkly clean.

Conrad's question came unexpectedly and Zhenya dropped the rag in surprise. “Oh,” she said, her expression sad and tired, “I have… She's…” she shrugged and bent down to pick up the rag as it gave her a moment where Conrad wouldn't be able to see her face. “She's recovering very slowly. And my other cousin is such a mess too,” her voice broke off. She swallowed before she continued in a much lower voice. “I saw her in Döttrar Vik last weekend. She… scared me.” She chewed on her lips now, trying to stop herself from breaking into tears. Last time she had cried in front of Conrad things hadn't gone well and they hadn't talked since then. She didn't want this conversation to go the same way again.

“Thanks for asking,” she added, wondering if Conrad was already regretting to have brought up this sad topic again.

She had the decency to be concerned about him, wincing away, which would have been nicer had he not been exaggerating. “I’m fine,” he said, immediately cutting it out. His ankles did hurt, but he thought that was just a function of the stiff boots. In the last few years he’d started actually going out to the village every chance he got, just for a chance to walk around in normal shoes -- it was a pain when it snowed but he’d never died yet.

He wasn’t any stranger to cleaning up by hand, at home or at Durmstrang, but he’d always had a bitterly bad attitude about things that could be done with a wave of a wand. He’d scrubbed all the birdshit off the side of his house over the summer, mopped the floors about a dozen times. At least he was indoors now -- though (he stooped onto one knee to start on the floor) it was still irritating to have to waste so much of their time. Everything, these days, felt a waste of his time. He was an adult now -- what did he need to sit here, scrubbing the desks, scrubbing the floors, revising for a class he’d never care about again, for?

In asking after her cousin he’d hoped that she’d had, he supposed, good news. Something to cheer her up. That had backfired; it had been bad news, and she looked even less cheery now. Still kneeling next to her desk, he sat back on his foot, at a loss for words, and looked down at his hands. Of all the most sickening or disgusting or humiliated feelings he’d had in his life, he’d always felt most pathetic when he cried: he didn’t want her to feel any worse for his presence here. It was only polite to afford her some privacy.

As much privacy as could be afforded when they were stuck in here until the room was spotless, at least. He supposed he must have waited too long to answer, because finally she thanked him for asking.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, chancing a glance up at her again -- fortunately she didn’t seem to have actually broken down. “I’m glad to hear she’s recovering though. Sometimes it just takes time.” Not that he had much expertise in poisoned relatives. He glanced back down at the floor -- it was almost free of her spilt potion, so he folded a corner of the rag over and set back to work. “Are you still angry with me?” he said, to the floor.

“That's good,” Zhenya said, nodding approvingly. “After all, I wouldn't be able to do anything about it without my wand anyway,” she offered, grimacing as she voiced this thought. It really was unfair to leave them without their wands but she assumed that Galina Viktorovna did not want to watch them clean and she could hardly trust them to work manually if she had left them with their wands.

After she had answered Conrad's question in a not exactly extensive or coherent way, he remained quiet and Zhenya regretted that she had said anything at all. It was silly to think that he'd genuinely care or wasn't it? He had not tried to approach her for weeks – granted, she had been trying to avoid him all the time – so he must have been rather content not having to spend time with her or so she thought at least.

Then, finally, he spoke and Zhenya looked up to him just when he, too, looked at her. She felt how her cheeks reddened and she looked away at once. “Yeah,” she agreed, “I guess it takes time to recover from that. Not only for her… for her sister too. Nastya worried me so much,” she confided, feeling slightly relieved to be finally able to say this aloud.

As Conrad asked if she was still angry with him she was caught by surprise. It took her a moment to process the question and figure out how she felt. Well, she had a lot of feelings boiling up inside of her but most of them had nothing to do with Conrad.

The girl finally shrugged. “I don't know,” she said with a sad smile. “I mean...” she dropped the rag and sat down properly, facing Conrad now. “I felt…” she sighed and rolled her eyes at her own inability to express herself. “I felt hurt. I don't know what I was expecting but…” she flung her hands up in a desperate gesture.

“I've missed talking to you,” she offered sheepishly. “Are you mad at me?” She wasn't sure if he had any reason or right to be mad at her but it felt right to at least check. She hadn't been in a good state that night so she wasn't entirely sure if she hadn't offended him as well.

Conrad blew his breath out shortly. “I hate that,” he complained, “I hate being treated like a child. And I don’t see what the problem is with cleaning with magic -- we’ve got it and we may as well use it.” It wasn’t his fault that there were Muggels somewhere that did all their cleaning by hand. It wasn’t like he was one of them. He’d said this -- near verbatim -- to his mother in July, in something of a temper, but that argument had gotten nowhere.

Nastya must be Zhenya’s cousin that she’d met in Döttrar Vik, he realised, thankfully before he made the mistake of asking. He didn’t know just what she could have done to worry Zhenya so much, since she obviously hadn’t been the one who was poisoned, but he decided that Zhenya wouldn’t take kindly to his saying so, and she hadn’t taken kindly to his asking stupid questions the last time it’d come up, so he kept his mouth shut and nodded.

Not that this mattered; she’d looked away at once when she’d caught his eye. She was probably still angry.

She didn’t deny it, either, I don’t know -- that was just dodging the question. Everybody knew when they were angry -- Conrad had only ever been unsure why. He glanced up -- she was giving him a small smile, but now that he was certain she had taken it personally, whatever it was he’d done that night in September, he couldn’t return it -- he glanced back down

Of course, he didn’t know what she had been expecting either. They were practically from different worlds, when one thought about how differently they felt about everything. There was nothing that united them outside of a shared uneasy dissatisfaction with their lives.

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her he’d missed her too -- though he kind of had -- and he frankly had been mad at her for a few days after the fact, but he wasn’t any longer, so he said resolutely, “No.” It wouldn’t do him any good to say ‘yes’ anyway. He didn’t know what he’d done to anger her -- other than not understand her point of view, which he’d thought she already knew was a given -- but he’d only been angry with her because she’d gotten mad first.

No matter whose fault it was, he didn’t really want to talk about it any more, so he said, looking back up at her, “Can we just forget it?” The sooner they had worked it out, the sooner they could get back to working.

Zhenya nodded, totally agreeing with Conrad but at the same time feeling that Galina Viktorovna was making some sort of point that went straight over her head anyway. “Yeah,” she said bitterly. “It would lead to the same result – a clean classroom. That's what she wants and she'd get it quicker if she let us use our wands. Would even be some sort of practise for us.”

Conrad didn't enquire further when they had briefly talked about Aglaya and Nastya and while the girl found it a little disappointing that he didn't seem to be interested in more detail she figured that they'd be better off that way anyway. It wasn't as though Conrad would be able to understand what was going on. She couldn't understand it herself and she at least had some more information than he did.

Nonetheless the girl sighed. It would be great to have someone to confide in. Someone that would not end up being as worried  as she was. She could not talk to the things she had on her mind to her siblings. Maybe she could mention it to Rodion, he might be able to handle the situation but her younger siblings surely wouldn't.

While Conrad did not go as far as saying that he, too, had missed her, he at least said that he wasn't mad at her. That should probably have calmed Zhenya a little but, truth be told, she was reading too much into it again now. He wasn't mad at her because the conversation that had meant a lot to her had actually not meant a lot to him, right? He had been able to get over it because, to him, it hadn't been of consequence. He also hadn't missed her because, surely, that was true. She was just one of his housemates, nothing more, nothing less. The girl swallowed and looked down at the floor. What had she been thinking to believe that Conrad was more than that? That they were actually friends?

He asked her now if they could just forget it and the girl glanced up, feeling how her eyes were watering although she was trying to suppress any emotions that wanted to surface.

“Yeah,” Zhenya finally said, her voice somewhat cooler than she intended. “Of course, let's forget it,” she offered, picking up the rag and looking around for more stains to remove.

Zhenya was more fussed about the inconvenience of this than she was with the indignity, so Conrad didn’t bother to press the point. If she didn’t understand, she wouldn’t understand -- he’d learned this lesson young, that he’d get nowhere trying to explain himself to anybody else. Either he was uniquely affected by things nobody else cared about, or he completely lacked the language to describe anything he ever felt: neither option appealed.

Now neither of them were working, obviously. Zhenya let out a sigh, almost certainly fishing for another comment about her poisoned cousin. But what was Conrad meant to say? He’d already said he was sorry for it. He’d already heard that the woman hadn’t improved much. He’d already been yelled at.

He dropped his head, resting his chin on his knee, eyes half closing; the pressure under his chin made his words come out sort of muffled. He wanted to move past it -- he’d thought she would too, the way she had said she’d missed him. That had been sweet of her. But her tone when she agreed was unmistakably cold -- he lifted his head up again, scowling.

There was just no winning with girls! What was wrong with them! He said, frustration starting to bleed into his voice, “What, don’t you want to be friends again? Why can’t you just say what you think if you’re still angry?” He’d almost rather she yelled at him again than this: how was he supposed to know what he’d done wrong without being told?

Zhenya noticed Conrad’s expression after she had agreed to move on as she briefly glanced at him, feeling guilty that her voice had given away that she was not entirely comfortable forgetting it. It was not that she wanted to hold a grudge or that she needed to discuss the matter any further. She just felt that Conrad was making things easy for himself and she wanted him not to forget that they had had their struggles. She wanted him to care, to listen, to be her friend.

As Conrad blurted his questions out, Zhenya looked at him, feeling ready to burst into tears again. She was afraid of driving him away more but she really didn’t know if they even stood a chance to both get the things they wanted out of their friendship, or whatever this really was.

“I want to be friends,” she said as she flung her hands up in despair. “And I am not angry. I just…” she exhaled loudly, trying to calm herself and figure out what she really wanted and what she needed to tell him.

“I know I shared things that mean little to you. It’s okay, you are not personally involved, I know that. However, my family means a lot to me. I am worried sick. If you want to be my friend, which I really hope you do, you should be there for me and not dismiss my worries as…” she shrugged, unsure how to put her thoughts into words. “I know neither of us can do a lot and talking about it won’t miraculously help my family. It might help me though.” She shook her head now as tears were watering her eyes again. “I just… I can’t handle this all alone.”

“You are still angry,” insisted Conrad -- what, did she think he was blind? She’d been looking ready to burst for the past five minutes, breathing shallowly and throwing her hands around, and Conrad had been bracing himself for a while now, waiting for her to snap.

But she didn’t snap, really -- she blew her breath out and he set his shoulders and drew in a breath to snap back, but there was an awful pause before she went on, like she’d had to calm herself down first. It left him a little off balance -- still kneeling next to her desk, he let out his breath and quickly took another, still feeling like he should be ready with it in case he did have to argue back at her, still baffled at all of it.

Zhenya was sort of lecturing him now -- Conrad would have felt defensive if she’d been any less obviously on the verge of tears, but instead he felt like a bastard, even under all the offense he took to how she clearly thought he was too thick to understand friendship. I can’t handle this all alone -- he looked down with embarrassment, thinking suddenly about all the things he’d told his parents or his professors or himself that he couldn’t handle himself.

He was a horrible friend.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t know you’d want to talk about it all.” Talking about his problems had always left Conrad feeling mildly humiliated, but he supposed that Zhenya wasn’t like him, that Zhenya’s problems weren’t her own fault.

He shifted his weight to sit down, to let his ankles have a break, and tried to remember any of the litany of things she’d been worried about -- her cousin who’d been poisoned, the tournament she’d won, the new artistic flying club, her cousin who hadn’t been poisoned. Any of those topics seemed like they’d only be the first step into a deep, wide chasm of things he wouldn’t understand at all -- how was he meant to ask about them? Haltingly, he said, “So… what’s happened with your cousin then?”

It seemed to take Conrad a moment to process the thing she had said and Zhenya wondered if she had said anything that she’d take back if she could. However, if she was entirely honest, the girl did not really remember the details of her little speech. The words had just burst out of her with no real filter.

While Zhenya was afraid that she might have gone too far, she also felt a strange mix of relief, exhaustion and resignation. Her life wasn’t easy these days and if Conrad couldn’t deal with her then they should probably not be friends any longer. She was already bracing herself to clean the rest of the mess in total silence when Conrad apologised.

The girl looked at him through watery eyes and offered a slight hint of a smile. “I…” she sighed. She wanted to talk about it and she didn’t want to talk it at the same time. Things were complicated, her feelings were complicated. “I am not sure if I want to talk about it,” she admitted, throwing her head back, sighing again. “I just want to be able to talk about it with my friend, with… you.” She shrugged helplessly.

Conrad now asked what had happened to her cousin and Zhenya looked down, chewing on her lip while she contemplated how to answer his question without driving him away again. She could tell that it was hard to relate to her problems and worries and she did not judge him for this inability. She just wanted him to be there for her, listen, offer comfort, whatever friends would do in such a situation anyway.

She only realised that she was crying again when a tear dropped onto her hand in her lap. And she could tell that she was blushing now. “There’s apparently a stalker who wants to kill her,” she muttered and took a deep breath. “And he was almost successful. And he sent a really terrifying threatening letter, admitting his crime and telling her he would…” she swallowed hard, “try again. I haven’t got any news in three weeks now though,” a sob escaped her and she covered her face with her hands.

After a few seconds she let her hands sink down again and she looked at Conrad. “I’m a terrible person,” she burst out, “after seeing Nastya in Döttrar Vik I just… I couldn’t write to her again. She worried and scared me so much. I don’t know if…” her voice trailed off and she took a shaky breath. “I just hope they are…” her eyes widened slightly as she considered the right words ‘alive’, ‘getting better’? Nothing really felt appropriate.

I am not sure if I want to talk about it. Come on! What did she want, then? He couldn’t read her mind, he wasn’t very smart to begin with -- how was he supposed to know what to do? This was why he had to stop making friends with girls -- they were crazy. He scowled into his lap. At what point was she going to acknowledge that he’d at least tried, just now? He was feeling bitter and defensive enough to think that would never happen.

It just didn’t make any sense -- even if she didn’t want to tell him about this now, why would she want to tell him about it later? Did she think he could help at all? All Conrad had ever been able to do was give bad advice and insult her family. Surely that wasn’t what she was after now.

He blew his breath out and looked up, trying to school the impatience off his face. The last thing he needed was to make her angry at him again, and the fastest way to do that was probably to give her the impression that he didn’t care. For a moment he struggled for words, before saying, “I just… won’t know what to say. I’m not like you.”

He didn’t know what he meant by that. That he wasn’t an artist, or a girl, or even a good person -- that he lacked whatever it was that was driving her actions now. She could decide for herself what about him made him useless.

But the least he could do was ask, right?

Conrad sat back a little further, letting his legs relax to the floor, as she explained -- her voice was growing more and more strained, until it disappeared into a sob. His first instinct was vindication -- he had been so right to predict that he wouldn’t know what to say to her -- and his second was the buzzing anxiety that he’d somehow screw this up and make it worse. He didn’t even know what to do -- why couldn’t girls just get all their crying over with in their beds in the middle of the night in private? It would save him a lot of trouble.

“Shh,” he said, sort of soothingly; he scooted closer to her to pat her awkwardly on the back. “You’re not a terrible person. You’re just afraid to get bad news. I’m sure most people would be.”

He was not like her. Well, that was a fact. There were so many things that distinguished them and sometimes Zhenya felt that that was exactly what made her like Conrad. He was not like her. He did not go through the same things she did. He could maybe not relate to her problems but she could always rely on him to give her a different perspective when she felt stuck in the chaos of her thoughts and worries.

Whenever Zhenya had confided in Conrad in the past she had not been waiting for some generic response. She could get those anywhere, really. She had not hoped for admiration or praise either. She had always wanted him to be honest while still being on her side. At the beginning of the school year he had disappointed her more than he had actually offended her. Zhenya knew that she had been touchy, that she had overreacted, but she had felt like Conrad was not on her side then, that he did not even try to understand her at all.

Now she had a hunch that their conversation might go just as wrong again but she still couldn’t help herself. The slight encouragement she had received to tell her friend about what was going on had been enough to get her going again and she could feel with every word she said that she was spiraling downwards again. She wanted to stop the dark thoughts from dominating her mind, didn’t want to get all emotional again but the young witch couldn’t do anything about it.

Feeling Conrad’s hand on her back, patting her, she sniffed and forced a small smile onto her face. “But…” she began, but she didn’t really know what she was objecting to. He was right, after all, she definitely was afraid to receive bad news and it wasn’t easy not to write. However, it wasn’t easy to write to Nastya either. Nothing about this whole drama was easy, for none of the involved.

“I suppose you’re right…” she muttered and exhaled loudly, trying to compose herself again. “I just feel…” she shook her head as she tried to find the right words to describe how she felt. “I feel like I’m letting my family down. I feel weak because I cannot handle this better. I want life to go back to how it used to be when my biggest problem was when I messed up an element in my routines.” She paused and looked at Conrad pleadingly. “Is it so wrong to wish for that?”