Existence in the Stacks PV Anastasia ReOpen

The Gryffindor was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Or an emotional breakdown. She wasn't sure which. Maybe both? Some kind of breakdown nonetheless. She had spread herself thin on purpose, as an attempt to give herself less time to think about her family situation. It wasn't working so far, although she had managed to tire herself out considerably and somehow become even more irritable than she had been at the start of the year.

In her previous years at Hogwarts, she had spent a fair amount of time in the library, but not anything comparable to this year. It was partially because third year was harder. However, the main reason was the library was generally not a place to socialize. In her first and second years, she had split her spare time between the Gryffindor Common Room and the library. At the start of the year, she had begun to spend a bit of her spare time in the owlery, despite her allergy to feathers. However, after mid-September, she had taken to avoiding it unless her going there was an absolute necessity. Now, every moment that she wasn't sleeping, eating, practicing flying, or in class, she was in the library.

Despite the fact that books had been her closet companions when she was younger and that she was still an avid reader, the amount of time she was spending in the library was wearing on her. Not the library itself so much as the isolation. Ana was, despite her best efforts, an extreme extrovert, and spending so much time by herself wasn't helping her already precarious state.

On that particular afternoon, she was reading up on Boggarts. They were due to cover them soon in Defense against the Dark Arts, and Ana was desperately trying to figure out a way to mask her own fear before then. She would vastly prefer to deal with something like a spider or an ugly clown or a particularly ugly piece of couture than deal with what she knew was coming. How would she explain that away? More importantly, why was there no way, at least not in any of the books Ana had been able to get her hands on, to trick a boggart into taking a form that was not one's greatest fear? The only remotely promising thing she had been able to find was some footnotes about Occlumency, but she still wasn't fully clear as to whether or not that would actually work. There was also the fact that it would probably take her more than a matter of days to become an Occlumens, but that was a separate issue.

She twisted a strand of hair around her finger as she read. Her hair had been in a low messy bun when she had entered, but her fidgeting with it had caused it to migrate into an even messier ponytail. She was so focused that she was quite startled by the sudden appearance of another human. Granted, it probably wasn't sudden, which she would have known were she paying the slightest bit of attention to her surroundings. "Oh, thank you, Miss Finley," she said, upon noticing the stack of books. Her color rushed to her cheeks at the second part of the woman's greeting. She supposed it was inevitable someone noticed how much time she was spending here, but she had been hoping that any adults who did would chalk it up to her being overly studious and any other students wouldn't care enough to say anything.

"I-, um, I do leave the library sometimes," Ana said, sounding slightly guilty as though she had been caught in a crime. "To drink coffee and go to class and Quidditch practice." She didn't even sound remotely convincing, not even to herself.

Interacting with @Anastasia Beckett

Robyn couldn't help but let out a small laugh when the girl mentioned coffee. How old were these kids? Already getting addicted to caffeine? "Well, I appreciate you not bringing the coffee in here. You know that can stunt your growth... right? Certainly someone your age, with enough sleep of course, shouldn't need help staying awake?" She raised a careful eyebrow. Someone doesn't spend this much time in a library for no reason. Libraries were her escape, perhaps it was becoming Anastasia's too. At least she would be someone that reached out, that tried. Rather than letting her hide and run like everyone let her do growing up.

She gestured to a chair that was diagonal from her, and with permission sat down, sitting back and resting her hands on her knees. "So you're learning about boggarts soon, hm? Quite an awful class isn't it?" Her eyes slowly moved over the books at the girls table. "I wish it could be a one on one moment with Professor. A confidential moment of fear. But, it seems Hogwarts really loves to... put it on display. Our greatest fear." She hated that class, tried to fake sick, tried to do everything to get out of it. But ended up having to go anyway. "Surely you'll learn all about them in class. Why start researching them now?" Slowly, she was lowering a rope, a lifeline, for Anastasia to latch onto. Robyn just had to hope that she would take it and pull.

The girl smiled at the librarian's laugh. She sounded ridiculous, and in general, adults found the fact that she was already so fond of coffee to be amusing. She was okay with that though. Better they found it amusing than dig deeper. Explaining that she was rather dependent on the beverage because she spent most nights weeping and plagued by nightmares was something she would greatly like to avoid.

She nodded at thanks for not bringing coffee to the library. Her family had always been quite strict about food and drink staying in the dining room, as eating and drinking were their own activity that ought not to be mixed with any others, and even now that she often roamed the castle with a cup of coffee, her cup of coffee never went anywhere other than the halls. "I get more than enough sleep," Ana protested, again not sounding remotely believable. With the secrets she kept and her years of mean girl antics, one would have expected her to be a far better liar. This wasn't the same though, as she had almost no time to delicately craft the perfect story. "I just like the taste." Good Lord she was bad at improvising... Nobody liked the taste of coffee. People grew to like it because they liked the caffeine, but nobody drank coffee because it was so delicious.

She nodded at the woman's gesture. The librarian seemed pleasant enough, and anyway, given her tumulous relationships with her friends, she wasn't one to turn down spending time around someone that wasn't punching her in the face or spreading rumors about the wellbeing and whereabouts of her parents.

She bit her lip and broke eye contact for a moment when she mentioned the books in front of her. She was sure there were plenty of pureblood children who were afraid of their parents, but not all of them knew for certain that their parents were capable of doing exactly what they feared. Before this summer, she would have been able to say with complete clarity that her boggart would be her parents disowning her. Seeing as that had already happened, she didn't know what to expect. Definitely, something involving her parents, but not something that she would so easily be able to explain away as easily as being disowned. "I have an idea of what mine's going to be and it's not something I want to share. In any event, more books never hurt anything," she said, meeting Ms. Finley's eyes again. "I just fail to see the point of it. If something's our greatest fear, it's a lifetime in the making, and a few moments aren't going to make anything any better." Her cheeks colored slightly as she finished talking. She had unloaded far more than she had particularly wanted to, considering that this was the first time she and the librarian had had a conversation beyond greetings and maybe the occasional exchange of words over a book.

Interacting with @Anastasia Beckett

Robyn was not one that was easily fooled, especially with such a bad liar in front of her. There was a careful game of tug of war happening between them, Robyn gently pulling her to tell her what was going on, and Ana resisting it. "Ah yes, the taste of bitter boiled beans is quite delightful. That and the caffeine." She sighed lightly and shrugged, "Although, I can't judge. I do find myself quite enjoying boiled leaves. I suppose every one has different tastes. If you just like the taste, you should try decaf then. Less caffeine so it's less of a danger to you in your development." She smiled lightly, a harmless suggestion, truly.

The librarian listened intently to Anastasia's concerns, watching her reactions carefully. "You're right, books never do hurt. Except, sometimes they can exacerbate our feels by giving us expectations without ever experiencing them. You're reading up on them, studying them to your heart's content and brain's exhaustion, but nothing will prepare you for facing one. That is why they're taught, despite how much we may dread it." Robyn's body tensed slightly in the decision to tell her own story for her boggart. But figured it would do more help to someone else than harm to herself to tell it.

"I did the same thing when I was about to face this. I knew it was coming up, so I studied as hard as I could so I could be prepared in every way. I begged and pleaded to not have to do it, but it's crucial for every student to go through it. I'm telling you this as the librarian." Her eyes held a sense of sincerity and intenseness that could be seen when lost deep in thought about the Dewey Decimal System that she wished the wizards used. "Books only prepare you for so much. Reading about boggarts is completely different than what it will be like to face one in person. The fear that it... latches onto. Is unreal. That's why you experience it for the first time with a professor who knows how to handle it by your side." Thinking about her first boggart experience made a shudder pass through her body. "Have you talked to the Professor about your fears and maybe doing it privately instead of with the class?" These students had to start learning to ask for help, despite how much they wanted to. There were so many times she could look back on where she just wished she asked for help.

The librarian didn't even seem to remotely buy what Ana was peddling. Not that Ana was a bit surprised. Of all of the things she could have used as an excuse for drinking coffee, that was the worst possible one. She could have said she liked burning off her taste buds or that she thought it made her seem cooler and those would have been more logical and thus believable than what she went with. She had committed to it though and wasn't going to insult her own intelligence or Miss Finley's by not at least pretending to play along. She nodded earnestly when the redhead mentioned bitter boiled beans. That sounded spectacularly appealing...

Ana smiled slightly at the mention of concern for her development. Good Lord, her development was so royally fucked. She wasn't the most educated in childhood trauma and its effects, but she could say with complete certainty that caffeine was the least of her concerns about her development. Ana's eyes met Robyn's as she spoke. The Gryffindor was uncharacteristically still and quiet as she listened to Robyn's words. The look in Ana's eyes was a vulnerable one, and she herself wouldn't have been entirely certain what to call it. She liked to think that she was someone who could tackle her problems head-on. She was a Gryffindor after all, and wasn't that what bravery meant?

For Ana, books and the library had become something of an armor. Like the jacket she had taken to wearing lately. Not that it did anything meaningful to protect her from the trainwreck that was her existence, but it made her feel like she was doing something. Books were entirely in her control. If something bad happened in one, she wasn't affected beyond emotion in real life. If something was bad enough, she could just close the book, end that particular story in her mind. There wasn't a way for her to do that now.

She bit the inside of her cheek as she continued to listen. She had experienced far too much reality and thus far, didn't particularly enjoy it. Robyn definitely had some valid points except for the part where Ana had already gone through her worst fear. Hell, her worst fear had been her parents disowning her, and the truth had been so much worse than that.

"I-" she began to reply to Robyn's inquiry about Ana doing it privately. The only thing she really had left was her pride. She might be disliked by the general student population, but she was feared. That was another layer of protection for her. Growing up, Ana had learned pretty early on that her options were to be fearsome predator or cowering prey. Showing weakness wasn't an option. Her life was already hell enough as it was. It would be far worse if she couldn't face her fears like the rest of them. This was an unwinnable situation. If she found a way out or if she did it privately, she was faltering and showing vulnerability, but if she committed and went through with it, she risked her secret being exposed to her entire class. "I can't."

Interacting with @Anastasia Beckett

For someone that had seemed to spend so much time in the library pouring over pages and pages of books to convince herself that she could avoid her fears, she was suddenly at a loss of words. Perhaps a loss of energy to fight someone else besides herself and what was going on in a tumultuous mind. At her simple three words, Robyn softened. What this girl needed was not someone telling her the steps she could take to avoid facing the fear, or that sometimes our fears were worse than they seemed. There was something that she was facing constantly, and she was stuck. "I'll be right back." Robyn slowly stood up, pausing a moment before heading to her desk.

Comfort objects were ones that she cherished. If she was a collector of anything besides books it would be mugs and blankets. No matter where she went, if she could find a mug or a blanket she could feel safe. For this reason, Robyn had brought a stack of her own collection of blankets. Ones that she actually knitted herself in her free time. They took ages, but goodness they were satisfying when they were finished. The one she plucked from a hidden basket tucked away beneath her desk was one that was red and gold, the colors of Gryffindor. She had one for nearly every house, Ravenclaw was her last one that was still in progress. With the blanket draped over her arm, she walked back to the worried cub.

The drape moved from over her arm to gently around Anastasia. "Sometimes, being brave is knowing when to ask for help Ms. Beckett. In the house of the brave and bold it can seem like you're expected to tackle on everything yourself, but that's not always the case." She smiled gently as she returned to her seat. "You don't have to talk about it, but I'll be here to get you the resources you need. A blanket if you ever need one. Or just a place to feel safe." Books could not fix everything, books did not always have the answers, and neither did Robyn. But she would sure as hell do everything in her power to help out the ones that seemed to suffer in silence as she once did.

The girl's eyes flitted up at Ms Finley's words. Lovely, she had managed to make the librarian think that she was insane as well. That made what, a little more than half the school now? God, how was she constantly managing to handle everything in the worst possible manner? She was refusing to talk to her friends and most people that remotely cared about her and then proceeding to spew all of her angst juice all over this poor librarian who was just trying to do her job. Sighing slightly, she placed her head in her hands for a moment.

She lifted her head slightly as she felt a knitted blanket placed on her shoulders. Almost immediately, her bottom lip began to quiver and she was fighting back tears. She could remember a handful of times that either of her parents had done something like that, all of them when she was much younger. A glance at the blanket made the lump in her throat grow, and it took every shred of stubbornness in her five and a half foot body not to start crying or leap across the table and hug the librarian. While her parents had eventually come to terms with it, her placement in Gryffindor had caused no shortage of turmoil in their home for practically the moment they found out.

Somehow the kindness from the near-stranger made her thoughts about her parents even more painful. Was she really so terrible and unlovable that a stranger doing her job was nicer to her than her own parents? "Thank you," she said as the woman returned to her seat, voice trembling slightly. Her brow furrowed at the subsequent words. For a Beckett, admitting you needed help was practically the same as admitting defeat. Neither were acceptable in the world Ana lived in. Even in times like these where she so desperately needed help, a hand to pull her up from drowning in her sorrow, she couldn't bring herself to swallow her pride and ask for it. She made up excuses about how she was protecting herself and her friends from her inevitable implosion, but deep down, she knew it was more than that.

"How do you know how to ask?" Ana asked, her voice half curious and half vulnerable. She knew it was time for her to ask for help, to reach out to anyone. She knew who she ought to reach out to. She just couldn't bring herself to actually do it.

It was a good thing she had gotten her question out because Ms. Finley's words about a place to feel safe caused a few especially daring tears to brim over her lashes and onto her cheeks. She quickly wiped them away and swallowed hard. God, she couldn't remember the last time she felt actually safe somewhere. Beckett Manor had never been a place that one might call home in any sense of the word other than a residence. For Ana, it had merely been a new background for battles, not the respite that a home ought to be. While Hogwarts was closer to feeling like home for her, in general, it wasn't the safest place, and there was also the matter of the vile rumors that flew through the halls about her. The idea of somewhere that was actually safe seemed utterly foreign to her. She was a fighter by nature, but that didn't mean it wasn't exhausting for her to constantly be fighting.

Interacting with @@Anastasia Beckett

Anastasia's reaction to a simple blanket being wrapped around her was enough to tell Robyn about her mental state, which very obviously was not great. The students were so young but already had so much responsibility thrust on them. A boarding school of magic. Guidance could only come as quick as an owl, if one was sent at all. They were dealing with learning how to be responsible for themselves, keeping up with schooling, for some learning what magic even was, and they felt like they had to do it alone. Robyn almost wanted to put some plaque up that let the students know that what they were going through was not something they had to go through alone. For now, she'd have to tell them on an individual basis.

Robyn softened her voice intentionally. This was a delicate moment that had blossomed between the two of them but was still waiting for the proper care to truly open up. This might be a flower that Robyn might never see bloom, but she would take care of it anyway. "You're welcome." Libraries were many things, to Robyn they were one of the most powerful places on earth. The worlds that seemed to leak into their own, whether fact or fiction. It was also a second home to some, somewhere that almost had a built in element of comfort into it's existence. Well worn titles, cracked spines, water spots from tears shed during an emotional moment. They had always been a source of strength for her, giving her the words to use for her own life to help her cope with that week's struggle.

As the tears began to shed from Anastasia, she slyly moved her chair to block the young girl from the main view of the library. No one deserved to be gawked at in sensitive moments. "Don't you wish there was a book for these things?" She smiled, though a true sadness lurked behind the eyes that tried to stay clear and true for Ana. "I know it may be hard to believe, but I too am a Gryffindor. I thought I should've been a Ravenclaw for most of my time at school, I didn't know where my bravery came from, or rather I didn't think it existed at all."

A sigh escaped her lips of worries long past, she leaned back and let her eyes wander across the library. "I genuinely don't think I believed I was a Gryffindor until maybe... Fifth year. No, sixth year. See, I'm genuinely rubbish at spellcasting. I struggle with incantations, the visualization, the whole nine yards. I was able to get through most of my schooling just kind of coasting with my grades, making up for it in essay work or tests. But in sixth year, I finally asked a Professor to help. They taught me non-verbal magic for my last two years so I could focus on spells in a different way, and it worked. But I would've coasted and suffered those last two years if I didn't ask for help."

There was a pause as she took a breath to collect her thoughts, warm brown eyes reutrning to Ana's tear filled ones. "Generally you don't know to ask until it's been months, or years since you should've asked. But, as long as you ask for it eventually, no one can fault you for taking so long. I'm a fantastic witch now, if I do say so myself. But it wasn't always like that." There were still things she should be asking for help with, but that was for Robyn to come to terms with eventually. "Be brave Anastasia." She put her hand over Ana's gently, a show of comfort. "If that's not today, that's perfectly fine."

It seemed impossible for her to do anything right. Even when she was able to manage one thing to come out the way she wanted, it seemed twenty other things came crashing down around her. So much responsibility had been forced upon her, from her magical abilities and more recently, the amount of money and authority that had fallen into her lap. It was terrifying for anyone who had proper guidance and perfect emotional stability. Ana had neither of those things and she was still reeling from her mother's death. Most of her parents' money had been set aside in a trust for once she came of age, but Aunt Demeteria's fortune, which was considerably more than she inherited from either parent was hers to spend on whatever she pleased. Even someone who had grown up in the lap of luxury and had a taste as extravagant as Ana's would be hard-pressed to spend it all in one lifetime.

She didn't understand the point of any of it. She barely knew who she was at this point, and already, she was forced to deal with enormous duties. Her entire life prior to that summer had been spent in preparation for inheriting and carrying on the Beckett legacy, but that had all been with the presumption it would happen over time as opposed to all at once. Life as a thirteen-year-old witch trying to navigate drama and first relationships and magic was complicated enough as it was and Ana rather resented all the added stress her family had seen fit to place on her shoulders.

Robyn's tone made Ana feel even more vulnerable. She seemed to actually remember that Ana was a child, no matter how much authority and power her parents' absence had left her with. For some reason, that caused Ana's lip to tremble. She wasn't a superhero or even a fully formed adult, and it seemed her remaining family had forgotten that.

Her eyes flitted around the room before meeting Robyn's again. Ever since she could read, libraries had been her favorite place to pass time. Before she could reach the bookshelves without standing on tiptoes, the library at Beckett Manor had been a place to retreat and recharge. A small part of her found it amusing that the librarian had begun the conversation by expressing concern that Ana was spending too much time in the library, when, after this conversation, Ana would almost definitely be spending more time there.

If Ana were not already half willing to die for the librarian, she was after her next action. She clearly noticed that Ana wasn't alright, but instead of filling the air with meaningless words, she had shielded her from the piercing gaze of strangers. It seemed Ana was watched at every moment, and not in a good way. She nodded and laughed slightly at Robyn's words. "It seems the things that would most warrant books seldom have them," Ana said smiling sadly. There seemed to be a thousand titles along the lines of "How to Cook for Beginners" or "The Art of Sewing", while she had yet to see anything along the lines of "how to cope with the death of your mother at the same time as the incarceration of your father resulting in a massive inheritance and backbreaking responsibilities and keep it all a secret" in the extensive Beckett library or Hogwarts library. Pity, it sounded like a best seller to her.

The revelation that Ms. Finley was also a Gryffindor surprised her; however, after a moment's thought, it made a bit more sense. Ana listened intently. Despite how different their two situations sounded, she would definitely relate to the feelings the older lion was expressing. She hadn't believed that she belonged nearly her entire first year, mostly because of how set she had been on Slytherin. Now, the idea of anything but Gryffindor sounded utterly impossible. Her eyes widened as the conversation continued. She had rather assumed that Ms. Finley was a perfect witch. Granted, she hadn't been given much reason for that assumption, seeing as she hadn't ever seen her cast anything, but it seemed to make sense to her.

The corner of her mouth pulled upwards slightly. She was definitely months past when she ought to have asked for help, but that was neither here nor there. The weight and warmth of the librarian's hand were comforting and for some reason, made her want to cry again, although she had no idea why. "How do you even get the stomach to do it?" Ana asked, her eyes searching Robyn's face. Ana wasn't a coward, at least not by anyone's definition other than her own. And yet, somehow, the certainty of pain and exhaustion that she was living with was less daunting than risking getting help. "Asking for help is just as scary as the thing prompting me to ask. I just- Once I do, there's no going back. And it's not something I want to put on my friends, they've got plenty to deal with and I've hardly been a banner friend of late. That ought to be a book too. Books make so much more sense than people." Words tumbled out, whether out of a yearning for human contact and conversation or because they truly needed to be said. The patience Robyn offered with her last words caused another lump to rise in Ana's throat, which took some effort to swallow. She had lacked patience in general but with herself most of all. She was easily frustrated when she wasn't good at something and growing up, being anything less than perfect at the first attempt was a failure.