The things you run from have a way of finding you.

[Kate Prewett]

'Murtlap essence, pomegranate, nettles, scarab beetle shell. Murtlap essence, pomegranate, nettles, scarab beetle shell...'

Inside a dusty little shop not far from Diagon Alley, Kate Prewett wandered purposefully down one of many narrow aisles, surrounded by ceiling-high shelves. The store had no obvious lighting ('probably charmed to stay lit'), and whatever charm had been used was irritatingly ineffective. She had to squint in the dull light as she picked up a shiny black substance encased in cheap packaging, covered in foreign ('Arabic?') words. The English translation had been carelessly scrawled on the back. 'Salamander scale – 7 sickles'. She put it back down with a frustrated huff.

Kate's heels made dull sounds on the badly maintained floorboards as she walked, glancing at the front desk and its tiny 'Back in 5 minutes' placard. She was never going to find the ingredients herself. She longed for the large, brightly lit, market-like atmosphere of Diagon Alley, just a street away, but the thought of the crowd was enough to deter her. Diagon was practically the heart of Wizarding England, or at the very least a major artery. The odds of running into someone she knew (or someone who knew of her) were too great.

She'd wait then, right here, for the shopkeeper to return.

She stared at the store's small, grimy window in boredom. The rain outside was reaching torrential levels, and she could barely see the buildings across the street through the rivulets of water on the glass. She stared at her reflection instead, then, wondering how recognizable she'd even be to someone who'd known her in school. Her hair had been her most distinguishing feature back then; those distinctive, unruly ginger curls. Thank Merlin she'd changed it. Ambrose had hated the ginger, said she'd look much better as a blonde. She turned her head slightly, trying to catch a glimpse of her profile. She supposed she did, though sometimes it was shocking, when she looked intro a mirror and mistook herself for a Malfoy. She wondered if that was the point.

The little bell above the shop's door chimed then, and she looked towards it, expecting the shopkeeper to be back. Instead, what she saw made her blood run cold. It was Kat. 'Katherine. Katherine Potter, not Kat. Never 'Kat''.

In a panic, Kate turned on her heel, intending to duck behind a row of shelves before she was seen. Unfortunately there was nowhere to hide. She stayed like that then, her back to the door and her shoulders tense, praying Katherine wouldn't recognize her from behind. She felt ridiculously exposed.

She heard childrens' voices. She thought she might be sick.

[Kat Potter]

[/b] She looked down at the twins by her side and gave them a quick warm smile before ushering them along.

Katherine diverted quickly to a side alley and ushered her children in front of her and lead them to a small and dark store. Kat stopped outside the store and kneeled down in front of her children- ”Nathalia, Ambrogio, you two need to behave in here. This isn’t a children’s store, no running around and no yelling, do you two understand?” She received a quick confirmation nod from the twins and she stood back up. She opened the door and walked in, Katherine had changed over the years but she still didn’t want to be recognized by anyone who might recognize her ginger hair as part of the Weasley cult. ”Children, do you know what we’re here for?”

“Pomegranate seeds, newt eye, salamander scales.” Ambrogio and Nathalia recited in perfect unison. Kat nodded with approval. She opened the door and her heels tapped on the floor as she walked in. She heard her children talking and going off to find the pomegranate seeds. She browsed the shelves and found the salamander scales quite quickly; she grabbed a bag before grabbing a jar of newt’s eyes before looking for her children. Keeping her voice at a regular volume she said, ”Ambrogio, Nathalia- come here.” She waited there and within ten seconds the pitter pattering of the nine year old twins came to a halt at her side, pomegranate seeds in hand.

She made a beckoning motion with her head and began to head to the front of the store. She did recognize the body language of the person there; she did life with the other female for some time. Her voice drawled with an Italian accent, ”Katerina Prewett. A pleasure to see you.”[/ul][/size]

[Kate Prewett]

Kate was frozen. With her eyes on the floor and her heartbeat fluttering painfully in her chest, she tried to steady her breathing. Deeply in, slowly out. Repeat.

All this accomplished was lightheadedness.

The twin's voices echoed loudly, jarring and shrill, and suddenly Kate was overcome with how tiny this little store was. Oppressive shelves towered over her. Shadows surrounded her. She felt dust in her lungs, and all she could see of the outside world was rivulets of water on a window pane. She felt trapped and breathless. Drowning.

As Katherine spoke again ('My name, she said my name', she thought dumbly), Kate blindly grabbed a packet of...something...off the shelf before her and pretended to read it through the blur of unshed, panicked tears. She could pull herself together. She could do this. She'd faced the fucking Dark Lord with more composure.

'Deeply in, slowly out'. It almost seemed to work, this time.

She blinked until her eyes were dry, then turned on her heel to face Katherine (to face her past, to face herself). Without the will to feign surprise, her face was blank, pale and drawn. Her hands shook.

“Katherine.” It was barely more than a whisper.

[Kat Potter]

[/b] Katherine’s voice had a distinct Italian accent; it wasn’t as Italian as her children’s, but it could be heard and the British accent was hidden yet noticeable in the twin’s when they spoke. ”I’m sure you remember Ambrogio and Nathalia.” As she spoke, Kat looked at each one with a loving look in her eye and was glad they were disciplined enough to stay next to her- sure they were being a little goofy in the store.

Kids will be kids. [/ul][/size]

[Kate Prewett]

Kate tried not to flinch under Katherine's gaze. Her head was spinning and her stomach churned.

Kat was so...different. She carried herself with more composure than she had in her youth. Gone were the rebellious Muggle outfits and her insistence on flaunting that unsightly tattoo. Now, Kat had the confident air of a professional, of a traveler, of a mother. Her melodic, accented voice was enchanting. Her features were sharper with age. She radiated poise.

And she didn't seem at all bothered by Kate's presence. If anything, she was enjoying it. That disturbed Kate the most. That Kat had succeeded without her, thrived after she'd left, and was now treating her like nothing more than an old acquaintance...Kate couldn't have prepared herself for how much it hurt. She'd expected rage and sadness and confrontation, not this devastating nothingness.

It felt like a knife to the gut when an amused smirk slowly worked its way onto Katherine's features. It was like looking into some twisted carnival mirror. In that moment, Katherine looked more like a 16 year old Katerina Prewett than Kate did, anymore. In a brief, absurd thought, Kate wondered who that made her in this situation. Not Katherine, or even Mackenzie, they'd never cowered the way Kate was cowering now. Annabelle?

'STOP IT!' Kate told herself fiercely, wrenching her gaze away from her childhood friend (protégé, burden, roommate, sister, enemy...). She looked at the twins when Kat mentioned them. Another sickening carnival mirror stood before her, this time reflecting two distorted versions of Zinnie's face. It was like being confronted with a past life.

She'd tried so hard to forget it all.

“I remember” She replied blandly, her knuckles turning white as she clutched the packet of ingredients in her hands. “What I don't understand, is why you're trying to talk to me.”

She tried to sound scathing, but her voice was passionless.

[Kat Potter]

[/i] so close to. I just figured that I would say something since I saw you. Now now Kate, you look in such a different composure from what I remember.”[/b] Kat smirked when she noticed the other girl’s emotion shown through he knuckles. Karma is a bitch.[/ul][/size]

[Kate Prewett]

God, Katherine was relishing this.

Kate shrank further back against the store's shelving at Kat's cold, carefully chosen words. 'Someone who I was so close to'. Kate couldn't admit it, would never admit it, but her heart ached at the thought of that.

However, when the deceptively casual conversation turned to open mocking, some colour returned to her sickly pale features, and her eyes flashed angrily.

“Apparently we've both changed,” she shot back with a hint of the viciousness she'd been attempting all along, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin as she spoke. This was familiar. This she could do. Righteous indignation, however grossly misplaced, was Kate's forté.

How dare Katherine? She was the stupid one, the helpless one, the one who'd had to be coddled and controlled and cared for, for all those damn many years. She wasn't allowed to win. She wasn't even allowed to try. She wasn't supposed to be able to.

Kate's gaze swept over Katherine once more, this time silently seething. She noted her decent, but not particularly expensive clothes, her wind-mussed, rain-dampened hair, and her bare left hand ring finger; all with a vague expression of disapproval and distaste.

“It has been a long time, hasn't it?” She added, her voice only slightly shaking. She pushed her hair behind her ear with her left hand, flashing an ostentatiously large diamond as she did so. “You look so different! So...grounded. And mature.” She smirked. “I suppose motherhood does that to people. It can't have been easy, being a single, uneducated teenage parent. I can't tell you how much I admire your spirit, to keep striving for something better. I would have given up a long time ago.”

Her smile was twisted, ugly, and didn't quite reach her eyes.

[Kat Potter]

[/b] Katherine grabbed her hand and noticed that there was not a wedding ring on it; it was only an engagement ring. She smirked. ”So Kate… Is you engagement the reason why you disappeared in the middle of the night with no notice to me? I mean 7 years later you can at least tell me that, correct?”

Katherine placed her hand back down, it was almost Katherine just dropping it- but that wouldn’t be appropriate in front of the twins. ”Kate…. Katerina Miss Prewett.” Katherine placed emphasis on her once friend’s maiden name. ”You don’t know how much easier it is to raise children when you have a friend, a counterpart, a helper, a boyfriend… a husband. I found a husband- it was a blissful five years. The twins loved him and so did I. Something you obviously have no concept of.”[/ul][/size]

[Kate Prewett]

Kate really was shaking now.

As Katherine grabbed her hand, she fought the urge to yank it away from the girl's grasp rudely. This was part of the show, after all. It always had been. Katherine was the impulsive one, the unrefined one; and Kate was the proper pureblood who grudgingly put up with the girl's lack of etiquette. Acting any differently now would be admitting how much they had both changed.

Katherine let go then, all but dropping Kate's hand from her's. Kate pulled it back to her side and made an exaggerated show of wiping it clean against her thigh, as if she'd just touched something unsanitary. All the while, her eyes never left Kat's.

She chose to ignore her first question, mostly because she had no idea how to answer it. Yes, she'd left when a better option had presented itself. Of course she had, she would have been a fool not to. She'd been miserable, had Katherine even noticed? And now here she was, 7 years later, still with the diamond but without a matching ring. Of course Katherine noticed that. Was it something to be ashamed of? Some kind of failure? Kate didn't think so, the current situation with Ambrose suited her perfectly, but all that mattered right now was whether Katherine thought of it that way. Kate shifted her stance defensively.

Kat was still talking, rambling on about love and devotion and bliss, notions she had no business still believing in after the lives the two of them had led. At her last sentence, “something you obviously have no concept of,” Kate glared. It was only then that she comprehended what Katherine had just told her.

So, Kat Potter had been married. And now clearly she was not. Kate couldn't help but laugh.

“Yes, I suppose nobody understands loss quite like you do.” She countered. Her voice was amused, laced with mirth, but there was a weariness there that kept it from being as biting as it would have been, had she said it years ago.

Her curiosity was piqued, and questions flashed through her mind ('So where's the knight in shining armor now? .. Did he leave you too? … I suppose you had one of your patented crises of faith and completely fucked things up again?'), but she dismissed them as being too callous to voice. She was better than that. Besides, there was no point in seeming bitter and angry, it might give Kat the impression that this chance meeting was effecting her at all.

It wasn't effecting her at all.

Really.

“So what brings you back to England?” She asked smoothly, attempting to bring the conversation back to simple, polite, simmering hostility. She'd never admit that she was burning with intrigue. “If I were you, I'd hesitate to show my face around here.” She looked pointedly (and a bit distastefully) at the twins, who were now fighting in whispered voices as the Nathalia tried to snatch something out of the Ambrogio's hand.

[Kat Potter]

[/b] Katherine didn’t want to spit her, but she was here and the opportunity presented itself. ”Really Kate, what happened to staying refined?” Katherine had an almost taunting voice as she witnessed the shaking blonde.

”Loss is just another factor of life, people are going to come and go, you just have to forgive them.” Katherine placed an emphasis on forgive as a way to tell Katerina she doesn’t care anymore about the abandonment.

”England? Well, it is my home country. It is so hard to stay when I am surrounded by memories of my deceased husband.” Katherine’s voice had a hint of nostalgia present. She looked down at the children who were fussing below her, she placed a hand on each of their heads before the two settled down.

”I have nothing to worry about. Ambrogio and Nathalia are legally my children. I have proof, now. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about us; you haven’t for many years, why would you start now?” Katherine’s voice was antagonizing. Katherine was baiting Kate, would Kate pick up on it? How much has she really changed? [/ul][/size]

[Kate Prewett]

Katherine was smiling.

No, that wasn't quite the word for it. She looked smug, amused, and a little bit...vacant. As a teenager she'd been so hot-headed; Kate was used to seeing her fight, with her shoulders back and her chin up, with that arrogant Potter gleam in her eye. This wasn't quite a smile, because this didn't seem quite like Katherine anymore. Katherine Potter wasn't supposed to look so serene.

Kate was still staring, trying to make sense of this face she knew so well, with these twisted expressions she'd never seen before. It was surreal. Off-putting. Uncomfortable. She almost didn't hear Kat's retort.

“Really Kate, what happened to staying refined?”

Well, that was one way to snap her back to reality.

Kate had only been properly furious a few times in her life, and it was always a horrible experience. Her stomach lurched, like she'd just been dropped into free fall, and her insides felt like ice. She had to remind herself to breathe.

“...you just have to forgive them.”

Again with that fucking serene smile. Kate wanted to scratch it off her face.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about us; you haven’t for many years, why would you start now?”

“W-why would I-” Kate's indignant reaction was more of a screech than actual, recognizable words.

She stepped forward blindly, as if she couldn't resist the urge to strike, before getting a hold of herself and spinning on her heel, stiffly stepping a few paces away as if it were the hardest thing in the world to do.

“Are-are you-” She was gesturing with her hands; she had to do something with them, since she'd denied them the chance to tear at Kat's throat.

"ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?!"

She spun back around to face Kat, temporarily blind to the fact that anyone else was in the room.

“Y-you, DON'T YOU DARE MAKE THIS ABOUT ME! Like I'm the selfish one! Like I didn't spend my whole lif...-childhood, my whole CHILDHOOD protecting you from your family, and-and MY family, and EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD WHO WANTED TO BLOODY KILL YOU-”

She paused for breath then, glaring at Katherine like she'd never hated anyone so much in her life.

“And you were just air-headed, consequence free, I'm-going-to-die-and-come-back-to-life-and-try-to-kill-myself-and-not-even-APOLOGIZE-for-it KATHERINE. Because the rules don't apply to you! Because THE CONSEQUENCES don't apply to you! Because someone ELSE took all responsibility for your failings! D-do you know how many people have ever abandoned the Death Eaters and COME BACK TO THEM ALIVE, Katherine? Did you even wonder HOW you managed that? Or WHO was sacrificing their FUTURE to make sure you were OK?”

Kate wasn't crying. She was almost crying, but she'd be damned if she let a tear fall.

“You Never. Even. Noticed! You just...decided to despise someone, like your family or Zinnie or Jack or the Dark Lord or ME, whenever you got BORED! Then you'd turn around and LOVE them again and expect everyone to be ok with it! AND YOU ALWAYS GOT AWAY WITH IT BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE ME KEPT YOU SAFE!”

At this, all of the energy went out of her, and she flailed half-heartedly, as if trying to reach for the right words but finding nothing there.

“Don't...don't you dare make this my fault.” She muttered darkly, glaring at her only true childhood friend, wishing she could make her disappear, make it so that Kat Potter never existed.

Then she turned away.

[Kat Potter]

[/b] Katherine didn't know what to say to all of that. As she witnessed the yell she quickly muttered a spell and covered the twins ears as to not worry them. "You were only there for 3 YEARS before you left me! YOU WEREN'T THERE WHEN I WAS KIDNAPPED!" Katherine couldn't help but yell back at Kate. "You think it was because I was BORED?! Do you know what it is like to LOSE YOUR MEMORY?! YOU THINK IT WAS ALL YOU!! No... You don't know how much you did help. But you didn't go through what I did."

Katherine let out a sigh. By the end of her speech, she sounded exhausted and worn out. She lost her cool and couldn't handle it anymore. "I never said it was your fault. I made my choices in life, as you did yours. They just didn't work well together. Now. What are we going to do, part ways or get passed all this shit?" Being a mother was good for Katherine, just what she needed to grow up. Katherine wasn't entirely sure if she was completely motivated or wanted to become friends with Katerina again, but it seemed like the right thing to say. [/ul][/size]

[Kate Prewett]

Kate didn't know what to do with herself. She hadn't been ready to see Katherine today, hadn't been prepared, and she hated that feeling more than anything. If she'd just had some warning, she could have handled the whole situation differently.

She would have turned around slowly, and pretended for a moment not to recognize Kat's face. She would have smiled then, coldly, with a slight raise of her eyebrow as if to say 'what the hell are you doing here and why are you trying to talk to me?'. She would have been polite, but dismissive, and maybe then she wold have maintained the brittle facade that she was better than Katherine, that she didn't have time for Katherine, that she hadn't even thought about Katherine Potter in years.

If she'd had some time to prepare, to make herself believe it, maybe Katherine would have believed it too.

But things hadn't gone that way, she'd been completely blindsided, and it was at herself as much as Katherine that Kate was furious. She'd started yelling, fully expecting Katherine to scream back in return, to start some no-holds-barred fight that Kate could win, and then Katherine would see that she'd always be better than her.

But that hadn't happened. Katherine had shouted for a minute, defending herself, then immediately switched tactics. When she spoke, she seemed tired, uninterested, as if Kate was one of her children throwing a temper tantrum. She was acting like she was past it, over it, above it all, and Kate was nothing more than a nuisance.

Kate didn't know how to respond to that.

She glared, trying to steady her breathing.

What Katherine was saying, it didn't even make sense. Only three years? Three years was such a long time. She'd spent three years being miserable, trying to turn Kat into an acceptable Pureblood, and instead of getting a thank you for it, Katherine was complaining that it wasn't long enough? What the hell else did she want?

What were they going to do? In that instant, Kate made up her mind.

“Yes. We've both made our choices.” She started, her strained voice growing calmer with each word. “And I'm not going to be there to protect you from yours, or to fix yours, anymore.” She straightened her back and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Katherine, I left. I couldn't continue to put my life on hold for you. I had to do what was best for myself.” Now Kate sounded gentle and sincere. “If you're not ready for us to entirely part ways, I'm okay with that, against my better judgment. I only ask that keep your distance from now on. For both our sakes.”

“I have no interest in being your keeper anymore, but I suppose we can be friendly acquaintances. I may even invite you to my wedding.”

Her smile was cold and smug.