Back Again [ALL]

If the student body of Hogwarts had not heard yet, Nessarose Bridgewood was returning to complete her schooling after taking a year off. Most, undoubtedly, had no idea where she had gone, and some almost definitely had no idea who she was in the first place. But she was vastly different than most people likely remembered her to be, if they did remember her at all. For a start, desire for revenge didn't weigh so heavily, didn't define her actions or show on her features. She was almost... pleasant.

One thing she had learned from a certain Gryffindor named Ducky - though she wasn't convinced she could really allow herself to call him that, considering how strange it felt to call someone a bird - was that it was really easy to distract people from what they wanted to ask you if you figured out the right thing to say. She wasn't entirely certain where she stood with him, even now, though his curiosity had been plain enough. And it would have been a lie for her to say she didn't find him interesting in return. But his reasons were likely different from her own, so she wasn't relying on him to find her on the way to Hogwarts or anything. If he did, so be it, but if not? Well, she could surely find someone else and pretend she had no idea why she might be so curious or interesting.

Her trunk she pulled by the handle, letting it drift along behind her as she approached the platform and then charged through the wall. She didn't need one of those cart monstrosities given her lack of pet or additional bag. After all, when one lived with one's childhood friend and only really saw one Gryffindor now and again outside of that, they didn't have a whole lot they needed, did they? Nessa hadn't exactly been worried about her wardrobe or anything.

So instead of apologizing under her breath as she passed people with all manner of Hogwarts materials, she wove in and among the other people and started making her way towards the Hogwarts Express.

For the first time in over a year the entire Nott family found themselves on Platform 9 an 3/4, although this time, not as a complete unit. Alexander had taken Anastasia, who had been living with him and Isadora, to Kings Cross and Pansy and Theodore had decided to venture to the station with Belladonna to bid her farewell and good luck for her final year at Hogwarts. 

The family dynamic had been slightly different this summer. Unlike usual Anastasia hadn't been ignored (not that Belladonna would ever give her younger sister the satisfaction of agreeing that their Father didn't love Anastasia as much as her older siblings), in fact, the youngest Nott had been the topic of most conversations Belladonna heard from her parents. 

There had been an argument between her Mother and Father, Theodore had gotten angry and then taken it out on Anastasia one meal time. That's the story Pansy had told Belladonna when she arrived home after a week sunning herself in Spain to discover Anastasia was no longer living with them. Not that this bothered Belladonna too much, Ana was a little annoying from time to time, but for Anastasia to stay with Alexander for the entire summer? Something didn't seem right. Nonetheless Belladonna kept her head down and continued her life as normal, trying her best to ignore overhear the hushed whispers between her parents. She hadn't heard much besides 'Are you ready for Anastasia to return home?' and 'Not yet. I don't need a reminder of what you've done.' 

Whatever it was that Pansy had done Belladonna had been dying to find out, not that her Mother had been much help - even her brother had refused to comment in the many letters the Slytherin had bombarded him throughout the summer. The Slytherin was, however, hoping that her return to Hogwarts would allow her to find a little more than Pansy had told her. Starting with Isadora - if the dark follower could ever get the chance to track her sister-in-law down. 

'Goodbye, Father.' Belladonna said, kissing Theodore on either cheek and allowing herself to be embraced in a Daddy's-girl hug. 'Mother-' Although Pansy wasn't paying attention to her eldest daughter, her eyes had caught sight of Anastasia who was being ushered towards the express engine by Alexander. 

'We should go and talk to Anasta-'

'Pansy, we've talked about this.' Theodore replied, cutting off his wife and forcefully looking in the opposite direction. Causing Belladonna's eyes to narrow in excitement about what this could all mean. Truthfully Belladonna didn't have a clue. 

'Theodore!'

'Pansy, my dear, we're not going to talk about this here. If you want to go and see your daughter then go.'

Your daughter? Surely it would have made more sense to address Anastasia as 'our' daughter, then again Theodore had always been rather detached when it came to the youngest Nott so there was nothing to read into there. 

'Perhaps I shall. Goodbye, Belladonna.' Pansy retorted, placing an hand momentarily on her daughters arm before hurrying off to try and catch Anastasia before she boarded the Hogwarts Express. 

'Well. Goodbye to you too.' Belladonna sulked, her lips pouting bitterly as Pansy trotted away from them. 'Well, goodbye, Father. Remember to write to me.' Belladonna called over her shoulder, flashing a supercilious eye at Theodore before tapping her trunk with her wand and having it glide inches form the floor behind her as though she had her own entourage. 

However, Belladonna didn't walk straight to the Express, the last thing she wanted to do was find a compartment by herself. Instead she glanced across the platform, scanning the station for anybody that she knew. Her eyes double taked. Her body froze. Her trunk bashed into her legs almost knocking her over. 

'Watch where you're going!' She hissed angrily to the trunk before cantering towards someone that she had just seen for the first time in a long time. There had been rumors about the girl, questions on where she'd disappeared too although Belladonna didn't believe any of them to be true. Nessarose Bridgewood was hardly the type to drop out of Hogwarts and become a dragon tamer. Some people at Hogwarts really were stupid. 

'Nessa!' Belladonna gasped as she reached the fellow Slytherin she knew from pure blood socials. 'You're back! What have you been doing for the past year? Anastasia said you went to Alexander's New Year party.'

'Sorry I couldn't be there-' Belladonna added raising her chin with a cunning gleam as though Nessa ought to know what it was Belladonna had been up to. 'I had plans with a certain someone.'

'It's good to see ... you... again.' Her voice trailed away as her eyes looked Nessa up and down in horror. 

'What on earth are you wearing?'


(OOC: Hope you didn't mind me jumping in as it said [ALL] I figured that mean't open to all? I know we haven't spoke about Bella and Nessa but I figured Belladonna and Nessa would know each other from pure blood socials in the way that Ana and Nessa did? I don't know if you want to Bella and Nessa to be close or not as Bella is very into the pure blood society and it's traditions but Belladonna would want to know exactly what Nessa has been doing anyway for the past year whether they're friends or not.)

[ooc: Yeah, we're using "ALL" instead of "OPEN" now, because people don't seem to feel comfortable jumping in if someone else already has in an Open Thread, so we're trying to change the rhetoric there ]

Nessa was almost surprised that Belladonna didn't try to hug her or something. To be fair, Nessa didn't know the girl as well as she knew Anastasia, so she didn't know whether or not the girl would do such things now that she was in her seventh year. Belladonna had always been more invested in what was proper than Nessa had, and Nessa liked to think she had the same sort of mindset as Anastasia.

But, to be fair, Nessa had a hard time keeping up with the Nott family and their differences. "I did," she conceded, skipping over the first question Bella presented her. At least for a moment. "I've been traveling," she added on a bit vaguely. It wasn't entirely untrue, though Nessa couldn't claim that she was being thoroughly honest, either.

Nessa lifted an eyebrow almost sardonically when Bella hinted that the younger girl should have known what was happening in her life, when of course Nessa hadn't the foggiest nor the interest to find out unless the information was laid out in front of her. So she just gave a noncommittal shrug.

Of course, when Bella noticed her generally lackadaisical state of dress, Nessa had to fight herself to keep the frown away. "It's been a long week," she replied. "Have you even had a bad week when it comes to clothes, Bella? Somehow I can't picture it."

Travelling? Belladonna's eyebrow had quirked at the somewhat delayed response to that. Whether it was true or not the Slytherin wasn't entirely sure and even if the girl had been travelling Belladonna was still slightly suspicious that there was more to Nessa's time away from studying than just traveling. What fourteen, now fifteen, year old girl drops out of school to go travelling when they have their whole life ahead of them to do that?

If there had been a irritate tone in Nessa's response it went unnoticed to Belladonna. Usually the ravenous haired girl was quick to spot any shade thrown her way, being someone who gave it out so often she could identify it in a heartbeat, but the pure blood was still transfixed at the outfit that her fellow Slytherin had chosen to wear. 

'You're right.' Belladonna finally said after she managed to draw herself away from Nessa's clothes. 'I'm never one to let myself go am I?' 

It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the clothes Nessa was wearing, in fact if one looked around the platform Nessa blended in quite nicely but when Belladonna was used to seeing her squeezed into the finest materials at pure blood socials this was quite a contrast. Almost as if she hadn't been living with her parents at all.

'Anyway.' Belladonna said, throwing her hair over her shoulder as she examined the fellow dark follower. 'Where is it you went travelling? You don't look like you have much of a tan and the weather was fabulous when I was in Spain.' Belladonna added, raising her arm up and allowing the sleeve of her robe to sag slightly in order to show off the tan she'd acquired from the Mediterranean sunshine.



(ooc: Also I think I may have misread your post to mean that Nessa was currently wearing more casual clothes as opposed to them being in her trunk for Hogwarts - I just reread your initial post and realised. I'm so sorry!!!!)

Nessa probably would have laughed if she were more the type of girl to be interested in fashion. That is to say, if she had been more on the particularly feminine side of things, she might have found the conversation amusing instead of irritating. Then again, it wasn't exactly Bella's fault. Nessa had not been particularly close to the Slytherin, after all, when there was Anastasia to talk to instead. They just didn't know each other.

That's when Nessa almost had to shake herself, because she realized how positive she was being, and that just wasn't like her at all. But things had changed when she decided to put her need for revenge on the back-burner. Playing the long game would work out far better, she knew, and she just wasn't ready yet. This year, she would have to channel her inner Ravenclaw and pick up everything there was to learn from her professors.

Belladonna spoke again, and it woke Nessa from her frustrated musings. "What, holiday only exists in the Mediterranean?" she asked, her tone more teasing than she expected. She was trying to keep from being overly rude to those she went to school with, if only because it would make her own life easier, and that meant making jokes rather than being sarcastic. Her eyebrow didn't lift or anything. Ducky Baker would be so proud of her when he found out. If he found out. They were... sort of a thing, she supposed. Nessa still wasn't certain.

"In truth, I left school last fall because of family stuff. My parents didn't want to make a big deal of my not being around, so we just didn't say anything," she went on, lying through her teeth - literally, considering she was smiling at Bella despite her need to think on her feet.

In Belladonna's eyes if you weren't going on holiday to sleep by the poolside or relax on the beach beneath the sun then what really was the point in leaving the country? To soak up other cultures? Belladonna never really saw the need for any of that, she was fine with her pure blooded British culture and learning about Siberian Wizarding Towns wasn't something that proved useful, which was most likely probably why history of magic had never been her strongest subject.

However the bombshell that Nessa dropped soon vanquished the Mediterranean from Bella's mind. Nessa had family troubles? It seemed Pansy Parkinson-Nott wasn't the only pure blood keeping secrets with regards to family matters. It appeared the Bridgewoods had their own secrets that they didn't want to divulge, which only made Belladonna the more interested. 

'What family stuff would make you leave school? If you were arguing with your family then surely being at Hogwarts was the best place to escape? Unless something else has happened with your family?' Belladonna asked, her eyebrow quirking as she folded her arms and examined the fifth year before her. Given the summer the Notts had had with Anastasia and Theodore having a Father-Daughter feud Belladonna was clueless as to what other family issues there could be, especially ones that could cause someone to drop out of Hogwarts? A family death? A family illness? Surely the Notts would have gotten wind if that was the case? 

Sometimes Belladonna was too curious for her own good. A trait, it seemed, she'd inherited from her dear Mother.

Nessarose had a dilemma. She couldn't decide if Belladonna was the type to go around and gossip, or if she would actually keep a secret if it was asked of her. That's why, when the older girl asked after her reasoning for dropping out for a year, Nessa just blinked at her for a moment. Then, she looked down at her hands and sighed before lifting her chin again.

As she looked at Bella, Nessarose came to a shocking and sudden conclusion. She didn't actually care what people thought of her parents. Or of her, really, considering she wasn't even a real part of that family, though no one had seen fit to tell her about it. She knew now, obviously, but no one had actually said the words to her.

"Last year," she began slowly, "I was bitten by a werewolf, and turned. I'm not sure if you remember Dylan. He was a Ravenclaw, but he's not at Hogwarts anymore. My parents are not amused, because now I'm 'tainted' or some other such nonsense, and not technically pureblooded anymore."

Nessa decided she didn't want the rest of her story to get out, so she left it at that, rolling her eyes at her parents' reaction. The truth of the matter, though, was that her parents had absolutely no idea what her secret was. They just knew she had taken off, and that she had replied occasionally to their owls to assure them she hadn't died - after all, it was far more irritating to them to know she was alive somewhere but refusing to deal with them.

"But anyway," she shrugged lightly, "I'm back now. Took some time to figure out how to deal with it, you could say."